10 Gower Street, Bloomsbury


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(51.52329 -0.13359, 51.523 -0.133) 


10 Gower Street, Bloomsbury

What's in a name? Well, this area abounds in streets named after landowners.

Gower Street is named after Gertrude Leveson-Gower, the wife of John Russell, the 4th Duke of Bedford.

Leveson-Gower was noted as a formidable adviser to her husband who held various political roles during the reigns of George II and George III, including Lord Privy Seal and Ambassador to France at the end of the Seven Years' War.

The Gower baronetcy was a subsidiary title of the Duke of Sutherland, held in the Leveson-Gower family until 1963.

The area now known as Bloomsbury had come into the possession of the Russell family in 1669. That year the 5th Earl of Bedford's son married Lady Rachel Vaughan, daughter of the 4th Earl of Southampton.

Southampton had started developing the area in the 1660s. John Russell died in 1771 and Gower Street was laid out from the 1780s onwards under Lady Gertrude's supervision.


Attribution: Spudgun67

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