Patrick Comerford
During one of my recent strolls through Fitzrovia in London, I found myself on Charlotte Street, where the Fitzroy Tavern gives its name to the area of Fitzrovia.
Charlotte Street has been described as the ‘spine of Fitzrovia’. Fitzrovia is known for its bohemian and artistic history, known as a meeting place for artists and intellectuals, and the Fitzroy Tavern, on the corner of Charlotte Street and Windmill Street, became a celebrated meeting place for intellectuals, writers, artists, craft workers and immigrants.
I am well-acquainted with Charlotte Street in Wexford, Charlotte Street and Charlotte Way in Dublin, Charlotte Quay in both Limerick and Dublin, and I have walked along Charlotte Street or Charlottenstrasse in Berlin, and I have gone in search of Charlotte Street in Prague, Franz Kafka’s location for Metamorphosis.
Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia was first laid out in 1763 and was named after Queen Charlotte, who married King George III in 1761. She was Britain’s longest serving queen consort, serving for 57 years and 70 days.
The street was originally residential but it later attracted a literary and artistic community, and became popular with craftsmen. The area has been home to many prominent figures, including writers like Dylan Thomas and George Orwell, and artists such as Augustus John.
Charlotte Street is historically part of the parish and borough of Saint Pancras, in central London. The street’s northern and southern extensions are Fitzroy Street and Rathbone Place.
The southern half of the street has many restaurants and cafés, and a lively nightlife; the northern part is more mixed in character, and includes the former offices of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and a University College London student hall of residence, Astor College. The street also has its own residential population, living above the ground floors.
Charlotte Street, together with Charlotte Place, previously Little Charlotte Street, was one of four streets in and around Fitzrovia that took Queen Charlotte’s name. The other two have since been renamed Hallam Street and Bloomsbury Street.
From the 19th century on, the parish and borough of Saint Pancras was home to a large, mostly middle-class, German population. Charlotte Street and the surrounding locality was a thriving centre of this community, and the street acquired the nickname Charlottenstrasse, after its famous namesake in Berlin.
The parish and borough boundaries of Saint Pancras is now part of the London Borough of Camden and the parish and borough of Marylebone ran through the area, mostly along Cleveland Street. These ancient boundaries are many centuries old, and they have been inherited by the modern boroughs in London.
Charlotte Street and Charlotte Place were wholly in Saint Pancras, but a minor adjustment to that boundary around 1900 now means that a small part of the boundary separating the London Borough of Camden and the City of Westminster runs along a short section of Charlotte Street.
The nearest tube station is Goodge Street to the east. Goodge Street itself crosses Charlotte Street halfway up. To the east and parallel with Charlotte Street is Tottenham Court Road, to the south is Oxford Street.
The street has a mixture of 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century buildings and is known for its many restaurants with a wide range of cuisine. At the height of the Jewish West End, there were numerous Jewish businesses in Charlotte Street, including Rudin, the trimming merchants, Resnick the butcher, Kahn’s salt beef bar, drapers, dairies, hosiers and tobacconists. French restaurants included l’Etoille, which opened in 1904, and Italians opened Bertorellis in 1912.
The Scala Theatre, opened in 1905, was located on Charlotte Street. A theatre first stood on the site in 1772. From 1865 to 1882, the theatre was known as the Prince of Wales’s Theatre. It was rebuilt in 1904 and was famous for Christmas productions of Peter Pan. The Jewish community once used the theatre for High Holy Day services, fundraising events for the West Central Clubs and Yiddish film shows. It was destroyed by a fire and demolished in 1969.
The Charlotte Street Hotel is a boutique hotel that opened at 15 Charlotte Street in 2000, its interiors decorated with modern British art, including works by such artists as Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, and Roger Fry.
It was once the location of Schmidt’s Restaurant, which opened as a deli in 1901 and it became a restaurant after World War I. The spy Donald Maclean, a key figure in the Cambridge Five, is said to have spent his last night in England there before fleeing in 1951, and it remained one if the ‘in places’ until it closed in the 1970s.
The Queen Charlotte is a pub on the corner of Goodge Street. It was first licensed in 1767, and was once known as the Northumberland Arms. The present building dates from 1897 and the name was changed to the Queen Charlotte in 2018.
The Fitzroy Tavern at 16 Charlotte Street was built as a coffee house in 1883, and became a pub in 1887. Judah Kleinfeld, a Polish-Jewish immigrant became the landlord. Kleinfeld had a novel way of encouraging chariry: customers threw money to the ceiling on darts, it was taken down annually, counted and the ‘pennies from heaven’ were used to give local children a fun day out.
His daughter and son-in-law took over the pub in the 1930s, and continued running the pub into the 1950s. While they were there it became famous from the 1920s until the mid-1950s as a meeting place for artists, writers, intellectuals and bohemians, including Dylan Thomas, Lawrence Durrell, Augustus John and George Orwell.
Later, Donovan’s Sunny ‘Goodge Street’ was a moving romantic song depicting Fitzrovia and the area around Charlotte Street in London in the mid-1960s.
Happy Birthday Charlotte!
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