The Polygon, Somers Town in 1850

The Polygon, Somers Town in 1850

The Polygon was an eighteenth century housing estate - a Georgian building with 15 sides and three storeys that contained 32 houses.

The idea appears to have initially appealed to the middle-classes.

Two of the most famous residents of the Polygon were William Godwin and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, who died giving birth to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

Another former Polygoner was Charles Dickens, who lived at No 17 in the 1820s shortly after his father, John Dickens, was released from debtors prison. Dickens later made the Polygon a home for his 'Bleak House' character Harold Skimpole.

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