A cellar in The Rookery.
In the Heal Collection, preserved in the Holborn Public Library, are a series of views illustrating The Rookery.
LXVII.—Nos. 100, 101 and 102, GREAT RUSSELL STREET.
Ground landlord.
His Grace the Duke of Bedford, K.G.
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.”