London Foot Hospital, Fitzroy Square, London W1 - geograph

ROGER FRY - 33 Fitzroy Square Fitzrovia London W1P 6AY lng

33 Fitzroy Square is a

townhouse A townhouse, townhome, town house, or town home, is a type of terraced housing. A modern townhouse is often one with a small footprint on multiple floors. In a different British usage, the term originally referred to any type of city residence ...

and former hospital on

Fitzroy Square Fitzroy Square is a Georgian square in London. It is the only one in the central London area known as Fitzrovia. The square is one of the area's main features, this once led to the surrounding district to be known as Fitzroy Square or Fitzro ...

in the

Fitzrovia Fitzrovia () is a district of central London, England, near the West End. The eastern part of area is in the London Borough of Camden, and the western in the City of Westminster. It has its roots in the Manor of Tottenham Court, and was urban ...

district of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It is most famous for having been the location of

Omega Workshops The Omega Workshops Ltd. was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in July 1913. Shone, Richard. (1999) ''The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant''. Princeton: Princeton University ...

, but it also housed the

London Foot Hospital The London Foot Hospital was founded in 1913 as The Pedic Clinic for Gratuitous Treatment of the Feet. It was the first free clinic for treatment of feet in England, and its School of Podiatric Medicine, which started as evening classes in 1919 ...

and School of Podiatric Medicine from 1929 to 2003, before being converted back into a single house. It is now used primarily as an events venue. The house sits at the southern apex of Fitzroy Square, at the junction between

Conway Street Conway Street is a street in the London Borough of Camden that runs from the Euston Road in the north to Maple Street in the south, being divided in the middle by Fitzroy Square in the south. The northern part of the street is crossed only by Wa ...

and Grafton Way. The house was built in 1794, designed by

Robert Adam Robert Adam (3 July 17283 March 1792) was a British neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam (1689–1748), Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him. With his ...

(as was the rest of the eastern and southern sides of the square) as part of a terrace of eight houses. It was used as a townhouse for the first century of its existence. The upper floors of the house were home to

Eva Gore-Booth Eva Selina Laura Gore-Booth (22 May 1870 – 30 June 1926) was an Irish poet, theologian, and dramatist, and a committed suffragist, social worker and labour activist. She was born at Lissadell House, County Sligo, the younger sister of C ...

and Esther Roper from 1913. At the same time as Gore-Booth and Roper lived upstairs,

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developme ...

downstairs founded and hosted the Bloomsbury Group's

from 1913 to 1919. For this, it has an

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

blue plaque to Fry installed on the Grafton Way side of the building. Famous artists based there in that period included

Vanessa Bell Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen). Early life and education Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...

Duncan Grant Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a British painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major i ...

Dora Carrington Dora de Houghton Carrington (29 March 1893 – 11 March 1932), known generally as Carrington, was an English painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton ...

, and

Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...

. The premises hosted a regular Thursday night club, whose members included

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...

and

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

. After the Omega Workshops went into liquidation, with the financial support of the British Chiropodical Society, the site became the London Foot Hospital. It also hosted the School of Podiatric Medicine, which was supported by

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. It was not able to be renovated to install lifts, and its closure was mooted - including being debated in the House of Lords - in 1994. When UCL finally terminated its arrangement with the School in 2003, it was moved to Stratford to come under the remit of the

University of East London , mottoeng = Knowledge and the fulfilment of vows , established = 1898 – West Ham Technical Institute1952 – West Ham College of Technology1970 – North East London Polytechnic1989 – Polytechnic of East London ...

, and the hospital closed. The property was sold for £10.75m in 2010. The terrace of 33 to 40 with its attached railings has been listed Grade I on the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, a ...

since 1954.

References

External links

East London Architecture & Properties
Bloomsbury Group locations Fitzrovia Defunct hospitals in London Grade I listed buildings in the London Borough of Camden {{London-struct-stub