Filled with academic, cultural and medical institutions as well as elegant Georgian terraces and leafy open spaces, Bloomsbury is one of central London’s most appealing districts. Only a stone’s throw away from the Eurostar terminal and nestled between London’s West End and the Square Mile, it is full of fascinating history and buildings. Its development began over 300 years ago and transformed land once owned by the Duke of Bedford from open fields into a planned grid of residential housing and garden squares. With the housing came churches, public houses, shops and, later, medical and educational institutions too.In Bloomsbury in 50 Buildings, author Lucy McMurdo explores the area’s exceptional rich and colourful history through some of its greatest architectural treasures. She also shows what gives Bloomsbury its unique character as she guides the reader through its wonderful squares, Georgian terraces, Edwardian baroque and art deco buildings as well as its more contemporary examples of brutalist and modernist architecture.
