Escorts in Bloomsbury, WC1B: who is close, and how soon
A statue of George I, dressed as a Roman, stands at the very top of the spire of St George's Bloomsbury. Nicholas Hawksmoor built the church on Bloomsbury Way, it was consecrated in 1730, and the stepped spire under the king is modelled on descriptions of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Hogarth later drew it into the background of Gin Lane. It is a good first building to look up at, and the rest of the district repays the same habit.
No name on the board has a home in WC1B. The nearest homes are in Covent Garden and Soho, a short ride south, so escorts in Bloomsbury always travel a little way in, and the office quotes the window it gives across the middle of town: usually about an hour after it confirms, longer at rush hour, with the exact minute written into the chat as she leaves. Every length and its figure is on the rates. What follows is about the buildings, because this is one of the few parts of London where the walk from dinner back to the room is worth looking at on the way.
On the ground
Bloomsbury in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameWC1B 5BE, WC1B 3NN, WC1B 5BJ, WC1V 7EN.
Nearest stations
Walking timeRussell Square, 3 minutes. Holborn, 5 minutes. Goodge Street, 7 minutes.
Getting there
WC1BTravel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Bloomsbury
Who works here
On the board in Bloomsbury
The six prints above are a first shortlist for Bloomsbury tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Hawksmoor's church on Bloomsbury Way
Hawksmoor had a cramped plot hemmed in by houses, and he gave the church its grand face on the street: a deep portico of Corinthian columns raised on steps above the pavement. The tower rises beside it rather than above it, and the spire climbs in stages, like a pyramid, to the king.
Carved lions and unicorns once fought over the crown at the foot of that spire. The Victorians took them down, and new ones went back up when the church was restored early this century. After dark, with the portico lit, the view from the far pavement is the best single sight in WC1B, and it stands a short walk up from Holborn.
Note 03
Two statues that face each other up Bedford Place
Bloomsbury Square, just east of the church, keeps a seated bronze of Charles James Fox, the Whig politician, wrapped in a toga. He looks north up Bedford Place, a straight street of plain brick terraces, and at the far end, on the south side of Russell Square, the fifth Duke of Bedford looks back at him from his own pedestal. Both figures are by Richard Westmacott, and both men were Whigs.
The street between them was laid out by the Bedford estate, which built most of this part of Bloomsbury. With a statue closing each end, it links the two squares in one straight line, and it is the most satisfying short walk in the district to take slowly.
Note 04
Sicilian Avenue and the tram ramp on Southampton Row
Just south-east of the square, Sicilian Avenue cuts on a diagonal from Southampton Row through to Bloomsbury Way. It went up in the Edwardian years as a short pedestrian street of shops with flats above, Italian in its detail, in red brick and white terracotta, and closed at each end by a screen of columns, so that walking into it feels like passing through a gate.
Southampton Row itself hides one of the odder relics in London. In the middle of the road, fenced off, the northern ramp of the Kingsway tram subway still drops into the ground, its setts and rails intact. Trams once ran down it and under Kingsway to the Embankment; the last of them went through in 1952.
Note 05
Portland stone and a Greek portico: the university streets
North of the squares the University of London takes over, and its two landmark fronts could hardly be less alike. Senate House, on Malet Street, is a pale stone tower of the 1930s by Charles Holden, the architect who also drew many of the Underground's stations in the same years. On Gower Street, University College presents a portico of Corinthian columns under a dome, by William Wilkins, who went on to design the National Gallery.
Between them, Gower Street is a long, straight run of Georgian brick, plain almost to severity, and it shows better than anywhere how Bloomsbury was built: street after street of the same flat fronts, with the grandeur kept for the squares, the churches and the institutions.
Note 06
Woburn Walk and the caryatids on the Euston Road
Near the top of the district, Woburn Walk is a short pedestrian lane of bow-fronted shops from the 1820s, built by Thomas Cubitt. W. B. Yeats lived in one of its houses for many years, and a plaque says so.
A few steps away, St Pancras New Church is Greek Revival from end to end. Its tower copies the Tower of the Winds in Athens, and at its eastern end two porches are held up by terracotta women modelled on the caryatids of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis. It was finished in the early 1820s, and anyone heading up to Euston or Kings Cross passes it.
Note 07
The Brunswick Centre, and the Foundling streets beyond
East of Russell Square the architecture jumps a century and a half. The Brunswick Centre, finished in the early 1970s, is two long stepped terraces of concrete flats, each balcony set back from the one below, with a street of shops and a cinema between them. It was painted cream when it was restored, and it is now a listed building.
Beyond it lies Brunswick Square and the Foundling Museum, which tells the story of Thomas Coram's hospital for abandoned children, founded in 1739, with Hogarth and Handel among its early benefactors. The hospital's old grounds are Coram's Fields, a park that adults may enter only if they bring a child. The square is the eastern edge of the district, and a sensible place for a walk with one of the Bloomsbury escorts to turn back towards the room.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Bloomsbury
Asked most often
Bloomsbury, asked and answered
Why does a statue of George I stand on a Bloomsbury church?
Who are the two statues at either end of Bedford Place?
What is the sunken ramp in the middle of Southampton Row?
What is the stepped concrete building east of Russell Square?
Which church near Euston has caryatids at its east end?
One zone either way
Next along from Bloomsbury
escorts in Tottenham Court Road
W1T, WC1Same ladder, same honest hour, one zone further across the map.
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.