General description and date of structure.
Northward from the site of The Rookery extends the manor of Bloomsbury, a full account of which is reserved for the volume dealing with the parish of St. George, Bloomsbury.
A plan of part of the manor in 1664–5, preserved in the British Museum and reproduced in Clinch’s Bloomsbury and St. Giles, shows that the western end of Great Russell Street and the whole of Bedford Square[[691]] occupy the sites of two fields called Cowles Field and Cowles Pasture.
In Morden and Lea’s map of 1682, the only buildings shown on the site of these fields are a few at the southern end of Tottenham Court Road. Great Russell Street had, however, already been formed,[[692]] and houses were in existence on the south side.
Nos. 100 to 102 formed originally one house, which in 1785–6 was in the occupation of John Sheldon. It would therefore seem that this was the house referred to by Elmes, who stated[[693]] that Sir Christopher Wren designed a fine mansion in this street which was afterwards occupied by his son, and “more recently by the celebrated surgeon and anatomist, Mr. Shelden.”
The records of His Grace the Duke of Bedford, however, lend no countenance whatever to the suggestion that Wren’s son occupied the house, and indeed show Stephen Wren as residing in a house, afterwards known as No. 32, on the south side of the street, in 1751, when he wrote the letters “headed Great Russell Street,” on which Elmes apparently relied in making his statement. As regards the ascription of the design of the house to Sir Christopher Wren, the Bedford Estate records afford no direct evidence.
There is, however, no doubt that these premises were originally “Thanet House,” the Earl of Thanet having taken a lease of the house for a term of 62 years from Michaelmas, 1693. It would seem, indeed, that the Earl was actually in occupation some years previously, if this was the mansion referred to in the statement that the Earl’s eldest son was born “at Thanet House in Great Russell Street, on April 29th, 1686.”[[694]]
After 1787 it was divided into two houses, and is thus shown in the illustration included in Parton’s Hospital and Parish of St. Giles, a reproduction of which is given on the next page. A further division took place about 1820.
Writing in 1823, Elmes says:[[695]] “Sir Christopher’s noble front, with its majestic cantaliver cornice, has now been taken down by a speculative builder, and common Act of Parliament fronts run up.” The present elevation corresponds to this description, and the interiors of the houses are without any noteworthy features. It is interesting to note that the “speculative builder” is shown by the Bedford Estate records to have been Thomas Cubitt.
G. Scharf. Lithog.
Thanet House. Great Russell Street.