Fitzrovia News

Memorial service for man who died sleeping rough in Fitzrovia park

9:48 pm, Thursday, 20 September 2018

A memorial service will be held this Friday (21 September) at a church soup kitchen for a man who died while sleeping rough in Whitfield Gardens public open space. The man, known as Igor, was originally from Ukraine and died in his sleep on 31 August near where his friends [...]

Beige Holes of Fitzrovia: new squares are generic nowhere places derived from transactions and contracts

8:03 pm, Thursday, 20 September 2018

Two new privately owned public spaces (POPS) in Fitzrovia are products of development and real estate speculation in a wildly distorted market. The first project, completed in 2016, is GROSS.MAX.’s design for Fitzroy Place, and the second is Gustafson Porter + Bowman’s [...]

Guided walks explore London’s history of sexual diversity

8:55 am, Wednesday, 29 August 2018

Two fundraising guided walks to support international LGBT activists will take place in September and uncover the hidden sexual history of some familiar surroundings. London-based activist Richard Cohen is leading the guided tours, in affiliation with the Amnesty [...]

Nursery empty again after charities fail to agree on future plans

9:25 am, Tuesday, 28 August 2018

The children’s nursery in Whitfield Street is to close at the end of this week after more than ten years of serving the community with the loss of 25 places for under-fives because of a disagreement between two charities over improvements to the building and plans to [...]

Designs for Alfred Place and Whitfield Gardens go on public display

7:50 pm, Friday, 20 July 2018

Camden Council has published landscape designs for a new public park at Alfred Place, a redesign for the existing Whitfield Gardens, and is seeking comments on the proposals this summer. The scheme is part of a £35 million transformation of the Tottenham Court Road area [...]

New plans for mental health services in Camden and Islington

11:41 am, Sunday, 15 July 2018

Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust are consulting on plans to change mental health services and build a new hospital and community health hubs, a project to be partly funded by the sale of a property at Tottenham Mews in Fitzrovia. The consultation is seeking the [...]

Camden Council gets £870k to tackle rough sleeping

11:01 am, Monday, 25 June 2018

Someone sleeping on the street under a blanket.

Camden Council has secured £870,000 of government funding to assist homeless people in the borough after a count of rough sleepers identified a more accurate picture of its street population. The money, from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government [...]

Westminster council to draw up new plans for ‘improving the Oxford Street District’

11:44 am, Friday, 15 June 2018

Westminster council has written to community groups in the neighbourhoods surrounding Oxford Street to announce that “completely new proposals” will be drawn up after the summer but that pedestrianisation is “off the table for good”. In a letter [...]

Third outing for Fitzrovia’s celebration of music and culture

9:10 pm, Monday, 28 May 2018

There will be four days of events on offer this week from the organisers of the third annual festival to celebrate Fitzrovia’s rich and diverse artistic past. Team FitzFest will put on a wide selection of concerts, drama, talks, walks, and social and fitness events and [...]

Volunteers sought for Camden rough sleeper count

10:06 pm, Monday, 14 May 2018

Camden Safer Streets Team will be carrying out a comprehensive count of people sleeping rough in the borough this week and is looking for volunteers from the community to help. In the autumn of 2017 an official count revealed that there were total of 1,137 rough sleepers in [...]

Summer gardening club aims to make Fitzrovia greener, not more commercial

9:31 am, Tuesday, 1 May 2018

A new gardening club will be launched on Saturday at one of Fitzrovia’s most used and abused public open spaces ahead of London becoming the world’s first National Park City. Volunteers from the Friends of Fitzrovia Parks will be spending an hour every Saturday [...]

Wilkie Collins lived out the double identities of his characters

10:52 pm, Monday, 30 April 2018

Scene from BBC adaption of The Woman in White.

Of all the 19th century Fitzrovians who had secret families, Wilkie Collins is probably my favourite. Famous for ‘sensation novels’ such as The Woman in White and The Moonstone, Collins was adept at probing the hypocrisy that underpinned bourgeois family values in [...]

Westminster Tories in disarray, Labour opposition defies Mayor, and new party to fight Oxford Street pedestrianisation

11:41 pm, Sunday, 29 April 2018

Plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street have caused Westminster council’s Tory leadership and their Labour opponents to defy Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, and have given birth to a single issue party to fight the local elections this Thursday. Westminster’s cabinet [...]

If we don’t care for our own backyard then nobody else is likely to

5:06 pm, Wednesday, 11 April 2018

By Griff Rhys Jones There are big plans for Oxford Street in the offing. You may already know of them and they are certainly going to affect the residents who live around that retail artery. There was a consultation with Transport for London, but it appears that they put up [...]

Parks group plans summer wildflower display in Whitfield Gardens

9:17 am, Tuesday, 3 April 2018

The Friends of Fitzrovia Parks will be holding a wildflower planting day in Whitfield Gardens on Saturday morning. Collections of native wildflowers will give an attractive display this summer and will help boost the populations of butterflies, bees, and birds. Seeds [...]

Tributes left for homeless man who died sleeping on Tottenham Court Road

8:44 am, Tuesday, 3 April 2018

Bunches of flowers and messages have been left on Tottenham Court Road in memory of a homeless man who died last week while sleeping on the street. The Huffington Post reports that a man who was aged in his 40s and was known as “Irish Keith” died on the pavement [...]

Mortgage providers will not lend for affordable homes at West End site

1:25 pm, Friday, 23 March 2018

A Westminster council planning committee is being asked to approve a legal agreement to enable affordable homes at a landmark West End development to be re-sold at market prices because mortgage lenders will no longer finance the type of property offered. The [...]

Oxford Street consultation report withdrawn after responses were not counted

10:15 am, Tuesday, 20 March 2018

A report analysing the responses to a consultation on the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street has had to be withdrawn after it was discovered Transport for London gave out an incorrect email address for respondents to use. Last week Val Shawcross, deputy mayor for transport, [...]

A history of every street in Fitzrovia West

12:00 pm, Tuesday, 6 March 2018

A comprehensive history of every street in western Fitzrovia is included in the recently published Survey of London for South East Marylebone (Volume 52, Part 2). It includes archive pictures of many pubs, concert halls, places of worship, historic restaurants, art schools, [...]

Camden plans two years of chaos with ‘ground breaking project’

12:49 pm, Sunday, 4 March 2018

Residents and businesses in Fitzrovia will have to endure two years of disruption as work is due to kick off this week to transform the Gower Street and Tottenham Court Road one-way system in what Camden Council describes as a “ground breaking project”. All bus services [...]