Tag Archives: russell square

A sign on the pavement that points to a place that no longer exists

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THE EAST SIDE of London’s Russell Square is lined by large hotels, one of which is the Imperial. On the pavement where Guilford Street enters the eastern side of Russell Square, there is some lettering, which reads:

“Turkish Baths”.

Beneath this is an arrow pointing southwards, and below that, the word:

“Arcade”.

Kimpton Fitzroy Hotel in the background

If you follow the arrow, you will pass the west facing side of the 20th century Imperial Hotel, but you will not neither an arcade nor any Turkish baths. You will pass a vehicle entrance to a courtyard within the hotel.  Being puzzled by this old, and it seemed redundant, writing on the pavement, I researched it on the Internet, and soon found out something about it (see for example: https://carolineld.blogspot.com/2012/11/turkish-baths-russell-square.html & www.londonremembers.com/sites/imperial-hotel-statues)

The current Imperial Hotel was built in the late 1960s on the site of an earlier hotel of the same name (built in 1898), which was demolished, rather than restored, in 1966. It was in this first Imperial Hotel that the Imperial Turkish Baths were located. These were demolished along with the hotel that contained them. However, some statues that used to decorate the highly ornate baths were rescued, and now surround the above-mentioned courtyard.

The lettering on the pavement is outside the entrance to a Pret A Manger café. This eatery stands on the site of the former Librairie International bookshop, which might well have been a place where Communist and Anarchist publications were sold. A web page that describes this shop (https://alondoninheritance.com/london-parks-and-gardens/russell-square-and-librairie-internationale/) revealed:

“I have found references to the Librairie Internationale selling copies of Karl Marx publications in the 1920s and in the 1930s as one of the bookshops in London where you could purchase pamphlets such as those produced by the London Freedom Group, whose paper “Freedom – A Journal of Libertarian Thought, Work And Literature” included the address of the Librairie Internationale in Russell Square as one of the London bookshops and newsagents where Freedom could be purchased.”

I had never heard of this bookshop or the Turkish Baths at the Imperial Hotel, and would not have known about either of them had I not noticed the lettering in the pavement. I spotted this after having met a person, whom I had not seen since 1968, when we were both pupils at north London’s Highgate School. We had just met for coffee at a café within the Kimpton Fitzroy Hotel, which was built as The Russell Hotel and opened in 1900. Unlike its neighbour The Imperial, it was not demolished and replaced by something newer. The old Imperial would have been built in the same flamboyant style. Having noticed my interest in signs, my friend from schooldays pointed out another sign on the north side of the Kimpton Fitzroy. It commemorates the fact that a house where the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) lived with her daughters (Christabel and Sylvia) between 1888 and 1893. The house was demolished – possibly to make way for the construction of the hotel, which began in 1898.

Everything I have described above lies within a stretch of road less than 200 yards in length. And I have said almost nothing about the historic Russell Hotel that lies along this stretch. This and many other parts of London are so rich in history, which is one of many reasons that I am happy to be a resident of the city.

Russian in Russell Square

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RUSSELL SQUARE IN London’s Bloomsbury was laid out in 1804 following the demolition of Bedford House. Russell was the surname of the Dukes and Earls of Bedford. Its garden is a pleasant place to relax and contains fountains as well as a lovely café where Italian food is available. The garden was redesigned in 200-2001 by Camden Council, but retains features of the layout of the original garden created by Humphrey Repton (1752-1818) in about 1801.  Visitors to the square cannot but help noticing a huge, flamboyant hotel facing its eastern side. This is the Kimpton Fitzroy Hotel, which was known as the ‘Russell Hotel’ until 2018.

The hotel faced with terracotta coloured stone, which bears the date 1898 on its exuberant façade, was opened in 1900. It was designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll (1850-1929), who designed the dining room on the ill-fated liner, ‘The Titanic’. His design for the building was inspired by the Château de Madrid near Paris (France). The hotel is a remarkably eye-catching building covered with decorative features. A terrace framed by arches and slender pillars runs around the first floor of the edifice. This terrace is decorated by a series of roundish three-dimensional bas-relief coats-of-arms that are best seen with either binoculars or through the zoom lens of a camera. These have caught my eye on many occasions as some of them contain crests that include the mythical/heraldic double-headed eagle, a ‘creature’ that interests me greatly.

The coats-of-arms are of countries that existed in 1898. The double-headed eagle crests contain images of St George slaying a dragon. This suggests to me that these crests represent Imperial Russia rather than Austria-Hungary.  I was able to identify some of the other crests, such as those of the Kingdom of Italy, Portugal, USA, and France. Some of the others represent countries that I am not able to identify.

In 1994, the hotel hosted a meeting that led to the formation of the Russell Group of research universities. More recently, in late 2011, I attended a reunion dinner of alumni of the now defunct University College Hospital Dental School. It was the thirtieth anniversary of my class’s graduation. My memories of the hotel’s interior were of somewhat gloomy but impressive public rooms with much dark marble or similar stonework. The food served at the costly (overpriced) reunion dinner was unremarkable. What struck me was how much some of my fellow students, who were younger than me, had aged. What did not stroke me until some years after that evening was that the exterior of the building which I had entered was studded with double-headed eagles.

Unlike flags that can be easily removed or changed according to what happens to countries, the bas-relief crests on the hotel cannot be changed so easily without damaging the buildings structure. So the Kimpton Fitzroy, once the Russell, bears a curious history of nations some of which have changed considerably since 1898. What amuses me is that the Russian double-headed eagle, which gave way to the hammer and sickle in 1917, survived the Russian Revolution and is now Russia’s symbol once more. It is lucky that the hotel’s management did not attempt to remove it.