Museum Street is a street in the

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, part of the London Borough of Camden in England. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural institution, cultural, intellectual, and educational ...

area of the

London Borough of Camden The London Borough of Camden () is a London boroughs, borough in Inner London, England. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 from the former Metropolitan boroughs of the Cou ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. To the north is the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, hence its current name. The street is populated by cafes and bookshops to appeal to the international

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

-going public. To the north is Great Russell Street. To the south are Bloomsbury Way and New Oxford Street. The nearest tube stations are

Tottenham Court Road Tottenham Court Road (occasionally abbreviated as TCR) is a major road in Central London, almost entirely within the London Borough of Camden. The road runs from Euston Road in the north to St Giles Circus in the south; Tottenham Court Road tu ...

and

Holborn Holborn ( or ), an area in central London, covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part (St Andrew Holborn (parish), St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Wards of the City of London, Ward of Farringdon Without i ...

to the southwest and southeast respectively.

History

The street goes back to the 14th century and beyond. It remained largely rural until the late 17th century when the growth of London caused its urbanization. Known as a thoroughfare since records began, it soon came to be known as ''Peter Street .'' Later on, it became queens street. The origins of this name are unsure though scholars agree it is unlikely to have been an eminent Peter (notwithstanding perhaps St Peter) and more probable it derives from a

saltpetre Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with a sharp, salty, bitter taste and the chemical formula . It is a potassium salt of nitric acid. This salt consists of potassium cations and nitrate anions , and is therefore an alkali metal nitrate ...

manufactory which is thought to have existed there long before the British Museum opened in the 1750s. During the early years the street was the site of hovels of slum tenements and rather unsavory characters such as pickpockets and prostitutes. An attempt at gentrification saw its name changed to ''Queen Street'' and it became home to parish schools to ensure the spiritual and secular education of poor children in London. Around this time Charles Mudie opened his bookshop and stationers here, he soon explored the possibility of lending books as well as selling them and ''Mudie's Select Library'' proved so popular that it moved out to larger premises after ten years. The street also became a rather fashionable area with many of the foremost writers of the day gathering in taverns to converse and debate.

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

drank here when he was dedicating his energy to amateur dramatics,

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

and the Bloomsbury Set were also patrons. On the corner of Great Russell Street at the northern end is the Museum Tavern, a

public house A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption Licensing laws of the United Kingdom#On-licence, on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the ...

that traces its origins back to 1723.Henderson, John N. (1989). ''A history of the Museum Tavern in Bloomsbury''. London: Blemund's Books. . From 1723 to 1762 the pub was called the ''Dog and Duck'' (so called because duck hunting was popular in the ponds in the Long Fields behind Montagu House in the 17th and 18th centuries). The occult Atlantis Bookshop was opened on the street in 1922. More recent history has seen the street set up as a paragon for pedestrian access. Camden's 2003, ''Car Free Day'' saw the streetscape give right of way to foot passengers — a success which was heralded across

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

as an example of best practice in cutting vehicular noise and pollution. Since 1987, number 30 has been home to the commercial art gallery Abbott and Holder.

References

{{coord , 51, 31, 4, N, 0, 7, 33, W, region:GB, display=title Streets in the London Borough of Camden Odonyms referring to a building British Museum Bloomsbury