Former name(s) | Chapel Street |
---|---|
Area | Bloomsbury, London |
Postal code | WC1 |
Coordinates | 51°31′18″N0°07′02″W / 51.52179°N 0.11717°W |
Construction | |
Construction start | c.1700 |
Completion | c.1721 |
Other | |
Known for | The Rugby Tavern and the head of the White Conduit |
Rugby Street, formerly known as Chapel Street, is a street in the Bloomsbury district of the London Borough of Camden. It was built between around 1700 and 1721 on land that was given to Rugby School in Warwickshire and now forms part of London's Rugby Estate. Many of its buildings are listed by Historic England such as the grade II The Rugby Tavern. It was renamed Rugby Street in 1936 or 1937. In the post-war period, number 18 was the home to many creative people and the house where Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath spent their first night together.
Rugby Street runs between Lamb's Conduit Street in the west and the junction of Great James Street and Millman Street in the east, in the Bloomsbury district of the London Borough of Camden. [1] An alley known as Emerald Court joins the south side of the street to Emerald Street. [2]
Chapel Street, sometimes spelled Chaple Street, was built on part of eight acres of land given to Rugby School in 1567 by Lawrence Sheriff, the school's founder. It forms part of the Rugby Estate which was laid out for development in the 1680s and let to Sir William Milman after whom nearby Millman Street is named. [4]
It began to be built around 1700 and was completed around 1721. The street was named after the Episcopal Chapel of St John, a Church of England chapel on the corner with Millman Street which was already in existence when Chapel Street began to be developed. The chapel was later demolished and Rugby Chambers built on the site in 1867. [5]
The street was renamed Rugby Street in 1936 or 1937. [5]
The street contains a number of listed buildings such as the grade II listed The Rugby Tavern on the corner with Great James Street [7] which was created in the mid-nineteenth century by the joining of two houses, one from each street. [5] Numbers 10 to 16 and 18 on the north side are also listed, as are numbers 7, 9, and 13 on the south side. Pevsner comments on the sensitive restoration of 10-16 by Rugby School in 1981 and the railings and carved doorcase of number 12. [8]
To the rear and under number 13, formerly French's Dairy, lies the White Conduit head which supplied water to the Greyfriars Monastery in Newgate Street and which has been dated to 1258 or earlier. [5] A plaque at the front notes the fact. [6]
They told me: 'You
Should write a book about this house. It's possessed!
Whoever comes into it never gets properly out!
Whoever enters it enters a labyrinth –
A Knossos of coincidence. And now you're in it.' [11]
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honour posthumously.
Edward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008 The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, England. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions.
Primrose Hill is a Grade II listed public park located north of Regent's Park in London, England, first opened to the public in 1842. It was named after the 64 metres (210 ft) natural hill in the centre of the park, the second highest natural point in the London Borough of Camden. The hill summit has a clear view of central London, as well as Hampstead and Belsize Park to the north and is adorned by an engraved quotation from William Blake. Based on the popularity of the park, the surrounding district and electoral ward were named Primrose Hill. The Primrose Hill district is in the London Borough of Camden, England.
Sylvia is a 2003 British biographical drama film directed by Christine Jeffs and starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Jared Harris, and Michael Gambon. It tells a story based on the real-life romance between prominent poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The film begins with their meeting at Cambridge in 1956 and ends with Sylvia Plath's suicide in 1963.
Assia Esther Wevill was a German Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis at the beginning of World War II and emigrated to Palestine, via Italy, then later the United Kingdom, where she had an affair with the English poet Ted Hughes. While she was a successful advertising copywriter and a talented translator of poetry, she is mainly remembered in the context of her relationships with Sylvia Plath and Hughes.
Birthday Letters is a 1998 poetry collection by English poet and children's writer Ted Hughes. Released only months before Hughes' death, the collection won multiple prestigious literary awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry in 1999. This collection of eighty-eight poems is widely considered to be Hughes's most explicit response to the suicide of his estranged wife Sylvia Plath in 1963, and to their widely discussed, politicized, and "explosive" marriage. Prior to Birthday Letters, Hughes had only explicitly mentioned Plath once before, in a poem titled 'Heptonstall Cemetary' from his 1979 collection Remains of Elmet.
Erica Wagner is an American author and critic, living in London, England. She is former literary editor of The Times.
St John's Chapel, Bedford Row, in Bloomsbury, London, was a proprietary chapel and the home of a large evangelical Anglican congregation in the 19th century. According to The Eclectic Review it was built for people who seceded from the congregation of St Andrew's, Holborn after Henry Sacheverell was forced on them by Queen Anne in 1713. It was located at the northwest corner of Millman Street and Chapel Street, Holborn, London, in the proximity of Bedford Row, and was opened in the year 1721.
Court Green is a house on Essington Road in North Tawton, Devon, England. It was the home the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath moved to in late August 1961. Plath left the house on 10 December 1962, while Hughes lived there on and off for the rest of his life. It is the current home of his widow Carol Hughes.
Jacqueline Rose, FBA, FRSL is a British academic who is Professor of Humanities at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.
North Tawton is a small town in Devon, England, situated on the river Taw. It is administered by West Devon Council. The population of the electoral ward at the census 2011 was 2,026.
The Lamb is a Grade II listed pub at 94 Lamb's Conduit Street, in the London Borough of Camden, London.
St George the Martyr Holborn is an Anglican church located at the south end of Queen Square, Holborn, in the London Borough of Camden. It is dedicated to Saint George, and was originally so-called to distinguish it from the later nearby church of St. George's Bloomsbury, with which it shared a burial ground. While the historical name remains its formal designation, it is today known simply as St George's Holborn.
Nicholas Farrar Hughes was an English-American fisheries biologist known as an expert in stream salmonid ecology. Hughes was the son of the American poet Sylvia Plath and English poet Ted Hughes, and the younger brother of artist and poet Frieda Hughes. He and his sister were public figures as small children due to the circumstances of their mother's widely publicized suicide. Hughes held dual British/American citizenship.
King's Parade is a street in central Cambridge, England. The street continues north as Trinity Street and then St John's Street, and south as Trumpington Street. It is a major tourist area in Cambridge, commanding a central position in the University of Cambridge area of the city. It is also a place frequented by many cyclists and by students travelling between lectures during term-time.
The Colossus and Other Poems is a poetry collection by American poet Sylvia Plath, first published by Heinemann, in 1960. It is the only volume of poetry by Plath that was published before her death in 1963.
Great James Street is a street in the Bloomsbury district of the London Borough of Camden. It has strong literary and publishing connections, and former residents include the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne and the detective story writer Dorothy L. Sayers. The Nation & Athenaeum, chaired by John Maynard Keynes, and the Nonesuch Press were both based in the street. The street has almost all its original buildings with minimal external changes. It is described in Nikolaus Pevsner's guide as "a gem" and its mostly terraced houses as "unusually uniform for their date". The majority of the street is listed by Historic England.
Chalcot Square is a garden square in the Primrose Hill district of London, England.
Primrose Hill is a district in the London Borough of Camden, England. Electorally, it is mainly within the Camden Town with Primrose Hill ward, though some other wards do overlap.