Living in Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury is London's intellectual quarter. The British Museum, University College London, SOAS, Senate House and a string of specialist institutes and libraries are all here, and the area is laid out around a series of Georgian garden squares — Russell, Bedford, Gordon, Tavistock, Brunswick — that give it an unusually calm, planned feel for somewhere in the middle of the city.

Many of the terraces around those squares are now university departments, hotels or offices, so the residential stock is smaller than the architecture implies. Rentals are mostly flats in mansion blocks, in converted Georgian houses and in the Brunswick Centre, a large stepped modernist housing and shopping complex that is one of the area's landmarks. Student halls take up a significant share of the housing, and in term time the population is young.

Local life is gentle. Lamb's Conduit Street has independent shops, a few restaurants and a well-known pub, and Marchmont Street serves the area around Brunswick Square. Coram's Fields, a large playground and park, is famously open to adults only if they are accompanied by a child. There is good green space in the squares, though most are small, and Regent's Park is a fifteen-minute walk away.

Transport is excellent. Russell Square on the Piccadilly line runs direct to King's Cross and to the West End, Holborn and Tottenham Court Road give the Central and Elizabeth lines, and King's Cross St Pancras, a walk away, adds almost everything else plus Eurostar. Bloomsbury suits academics, students, hospital and university staff, and professionals who want a central, walkable and quiet base. Those looking for nightlife walk to Soho or King's Cross; Bloomsbury itself is mostly asleep by eleven.