Bedford Row

Bedford Row, is a Row of very spacious Buildings, pleasantly situated, betn Grays Inn Walks E. and Red Lion Square W but fronting the Walks, L. 200 Yds. and from PC. NWly 1470 Yds..

Bedford Row, very pleasantly seated, as having a prospect into Lincoln's Inn Garden and the Fields; with a handsome Close before the Row of Buildings, inclosed in with Palisado Pails, and a Row of Trees; with a broad Coach-way to the Houses, which are large and good; with Freestone Pavements, and Palisado Pails before the Houses, inclosing in little Garden Plots, adorned with handsome Flower Pots, and Flowers therein.

Bedford row, near Gray's inn.

Bedford-Row,—is the N. continuation of Brownlow-street, from 50, High Holborn, bearing a little to the L. also the first E. parallel to part of Red-Lion-st. extending from Bedford-st. to the King's-road.

Bedford-Row—is in Holborn, the north continuation of Brownlow-street, from No. 50, High Holborn, in an oblique direction to the westward. It is also the first street to the east, parallel to part of Red Lion-street, and extends from Bedford-street, Gray's-inn, to the King's-road.

Bedford Row, Holborn, at the north end of Brownlow Street, so called from being built on land belonging to Sir William Harpur's charity, at Bedford. Sir William Harpur was Lord Mayor in 1561, and died in 1573; his name is preserved in Harpur Street, Red Lion Square.

Bedford Row, very pleasantly seated, as having a prospect into Lincoln's Inn Garden and the Fields; with a handsome close before the Row of buildings, inclosed in with palisado pales, and a row of trees; with a broad coachway to the houses, which are large and good; with freestone pavements and palisado pales before the houses, inclosing in little garden plots, adorned with handsome flower-pots and flowers therein.—Strype, ed. 1720, B. iii. p. 254.

Ralph, in his Critical Review of London Buildings, describes this row "as one of the most noble streets that London has to boast of." This was in 1734, when the buildings were new, and the row itself lay open to the fields; but Dodsley, as late as 1761, describes it as "a very handsome, straight, and well-built street, inhabited by persons of distinction." In 1773, when the lease fell in, the annual income amounted to £8000.¹

April i1 1716.—Friday night Mr. Mickelwaite was set upon by nine footpads, who fired at his postillion, without bidding him stand, just at the end of Bedford Row, in the road which goes there from Pancras Church to Gray's Inn Lane. His servants and he fired at them again, and the pads did the same, till all the fire was spent, and then he rode through them towards the town, to call for help, it being dark, which they seeing they could not prevent, ran away.² The night after this curious combat a lady was shot by a footpad within a few yards of this spot. [See Gray's Inn Walks.]

Eminent Inhabitants.—Sir John Holt, Chief Justice, K.B., died (1710) in his house in Bedford Row, then called "Bedford Walk," and it must have been here that Radcliffe, as Arbuthnot writes to Swift, "preserved my Lord Chief-Justice Holt's wife, whom he attended out of spite to her husband, who desired her dead." Bishop Warburton dwelt here while he was Reader at Lincoln's Inn: all his London letters to Hurd are dated here up to 1757, when he moved to Grosvenor Square. Ralph Allen used to live with him when in town, and Fielding was then a frequent visitor. The Rev. Richard Cecil was preacher at St. John's Chapel. John Abernethy, the great surgeon, at No. 14. At her house in Bedford Row died, in 1731, in the eighty-second year of her age, Mrs. Elizabeth Cromwell, daughter of the Protector Richard. Henry Addington, afterwards Prime Minister and Viscount Sidmouth, was born here in 1757. James Mingay, K.C., "of the iron hand," 1792–1796, at No. 25. In the same house, 1807, Sir W. Garrow. One of the most amusing of Thackeray's minor stories is The Bedford Row Conspiracy.

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¹ Kearsley p. 12.

² Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 100.