The Hotel With Links To The Titanic: A Visit To Bloomsbury’s Kimpton Fitzroy London

Bloomsbury is a lovely area for a spot of London exploration, with its literary heritage, beautiful Georgian architecture and leafy garden squares. 

Overlooking one such square, Russell Square, you will find the impressive Kimpton Fitzroy London hotel. Its many carvings and ornate decorations make it a real architectural feast for the eyes. I have admired it from the outside many times, but I was lucky enough recently to be invited to have a look around and stay. 

Russell Square 

As is often the case in London, the name is a good place to start. Russell Square is named after the Russell family, who are the largest private landowners in Bloomsbury. The Russell family, Earls and later Dukes of Bedford, have owned large tracts of land in Bloomsbury since the late 17th century. This was gained after a fortuitous marriage between William, Lord Russell, and Lady Rachel Vaughn, daughter and heir of the 4th Earl of Southampton, in 1669. The Russells had already laid out the Covent Garden piazza, to the South, in the 1630s. 

In the late 18th century, Francis Russell, the 5th Duke of Bedford, started the development of his land and envisaged it as a leafy, grand district of London.

He started in 1776 with the building of the nearby Bedford Square. The British Museum was also set up in 1753, originally in a 17th century mansion called Montague House. The museum we have today was rebuilt in the mid 19th century.

In 1800, the Duke employed developer James Burton and landscape designer Humphrey Repton to design and lay out Russell Square. It contained large terraced houses, aimed at the upper-middle classes and a landscaped garden in the centre. 

The Hotel 

In the late 1800s the Eastern stretch of Burton’s 18th century townhouses were demolished for the construction of what was originally known as the Hotel Russell.

Completed in 1900 in the North East corner of the square, it was designed by architect Charles Fitzroy Doll. Known for his elaborate decorations, the phrase ‘all dolled up’ is often associated with him.

He also later, from 1905-1911, designed the Imperial Hotel next to it, an equally ornate building that was demolished in 1967 for a modern hotel building. 

The design was of a French-Renaissance style, inspired by the Chateau de Madrid, a palace in Paris that had been destroyed during the French Revolution, but as Nikolaus Pevsner points out ‘massively inflated to a height of eight storeys’. 

The exterior is clad in a ‘Thé au Lait’ (tea with milk) Doulton terracotta. On the front facade are four statues of English Queens: Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne and Victoria, by Henry Charles Fehr.

On the Guildford Street frontage there are four busts of British politicians: Lord Derby, Lord Salisbury, Gladstone, and Disraeli.

The Interiors

The interiors are equally stunning. 

The entrance hall and stairways are bedecked in a kaleidoscope of Carrara marble. 

The floor in the main hall has a mosaic depicting the signs of the zodiac around a winking sun. This reflects the Victorian’s fascinating with astrology and mysticism. 

You can also see an original late 19th century stained glass window depicting Elizabeth I by Arthur Louis Moore. Today it can be found in the Fitz’s Parlour.

The hotel underwent a major multi-million pound refurbishment in 2018 and reopened as Kimpton Fitzroy London, run by IHG. It has 334 rooms and suites. This is one of the Bloomsbury Suites overlooking the square. 

It was one of the first hotels in London to have electric lighting and ensuite bathrooms throughout. 

Links To The Titanic

A few years after the hotel was built Fitzroy Doll also went on to design the first-class dining room on the RMS Titanic. He is said to have used the restaurant of the hotel as his model, so the Titanic first-class dining room is said to be a pretty close replica of what is now the Fitz’s Brasserie.

Another detail is the sculpture of a dragon on the second floor staircase. This is ‘Lucky George’. If you rub his head it is said to give you good luck and grant a wish. 

He is one of two matching sculptures made by Fitzroy Doll, the other being installed on the Titanic and is therefore has been slowly degrading at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for over a hundred years. I think we know why this one is called ‘Lucky’ George. 

The Suffragettes

Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst lived at 8 Russell Square, that once stood where the hotel is today. 

Emmeline, her husband Richard Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia lived at 8 Russell Square from 1888-1893. You can see a blue plaque on the side of the hotel on Bernard Street today.

They moved here shortly after losing their son Frank to diphtheria. 8 Russell Square swiftly became a London hub for political activists, anarchists, radicals and Suffragists. She apparently also very much enjoyed decorating the house, particularly with furnishings from Asia. 

On the 25th July 1889 the first meeting of the Women’s Franchise League took place at 8 Russell Square, set up by Emmeline and Richard. This organisation advocated for women, particularly married women, to get the right to vote in local elections. After the WFL was dissolved in 1903, Emmeline set up the more militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). 

Other Links

T S Eliot used to apparently take his secretary, later wife, Valerie for drinks at the hotel when they both worked at Faber and Faber publishers on Russell Square. When they married in secret in 1957, he was 68 and she was 30.

The hotel also gives its name to the Russell Group universities, after a meeting took place at the hotel in 1994 between the original 17 British research universities. 

It is a lovely and very interesting hotel, situated right in the heart of Bloomsbury. If you would like to find out more about visiting, you can see their website here. 

Thank you for reading, you can find more posts below to keep diving into London’s history…