Chapel Street and St John 

‘It was dark when [Mr Loudon] reached Chapel Street. The houses were more respectable than in Wapping and the landlady recommended by Dr Coventry, was welcoming. She cooked him a meal and he went to bed, exhausted.’ This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024).

More about Chapel Street

This was John Claudius Loudon's first address in London (see information on Loudon's homes). The house no longer exists but the above images give a good idea of its character. Chapel Street was in the Bloomsbury district of the London Borough of Camden. Now called Rugby Street, it still exists. No. 4 was probably on the south side, opposite the Chapel. The street was built c1700-1721 and was named after the Episcopal Chapel of St John, a Church of England chapel on the corner with Millman Street. For half a century it was the ‘head-quarters’ of fashionable evangelicalism. The Reverend Richard Cecil was the minister from 1780 and died in 1810. 

Technically, Chapel Street was a Georgian Street in Bloomsbury. But the architectural style was late-Georgian and its residents below the midpoint in the middle class. It had business premesis as well as a resident population when John Claudius Loudon lived there, probably as a lodger. Georgian Bloomsbury. It is now called Rugby Street and is in the London Borough of Camden. As in much of London, buildings which were once middle class are now upper class.