The origin of the road's name is that it is the road to the Manor of Tottenham Court. The manor house lay just to the north of the road's junction with
Euston Road.
Manor of Tottenham Court The first surviving record of the manor is, as Þottanheale, from a charter from around AD 1000. The initial 'Þ' (pronounced 'th') may have been a mistake by the scribe, who should perhaps have used a 'T': all subsequent records use an initial 'T'. The manor was subsequently described as
Totehele in the
Domesday Book of 1086. The area was described as
Totenhale in 1184 and
Totenhale Court by 1487. Although the road's name has a similar word root to
Tottenham in the
London Borough of Haringey, the two are not directly related. '' is set outside the Adam and Eve at the northwest end of Tottenham Court Road. , being urbanised in 1804. The Manor formed the south-west part of the parish and later borough of
St Pancras. North is to the right-hand side. The manor occupied the south-western part of the parish of
St Pancras, whose boundaries are now used to delineate most of the south-west of the wider modern
London Borough of Camden, of which St Pancras is the principal component. South of Torrington Place,
Tottenham Court (and therefore St Pancras) lay between Tottenham Court Road and what is now the borough boundary with the
City of Westminster. North of Torrington Place,
Tottenham Court (and hence also St Pancras) occupied both the east and west sides of the road. The manor house lay just to the north of what is now
Euston Road (which was not built until 1756). The manor is mentioned in the
Domesday Book as belonging to the Dean and Chapter of
St Paul's Cathedral. In the time of
Henry III (1216–1272), a manor house slightly north-west of what is now the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road belonged to one William de Tottenhall. In about the 15th century, the area was known variously as
Totten,
Totham, or
Totting Hall. After changing hands several times, the manor was leased for 99 years to Queen
Elizabeth I, and it came to be popularly called
Tottenham Court. In 1639, the land was leased to
Charles I; following his execution ten years later, it was sold to Ralph Harrison. It regained Crown ownership upon the
Restoration of the monarchy, where it was given a 41-year lease to
Charles II.
Urbanisation The manor became the property of the
Fitzroys, Dukes of Grafton, who built
Fitzroy Square on a part of the manor estate towards the end of the 18th century. There was a manor house at the northwest end of the road, which subsequently became the Adam and Eve pub. This was demolished to build the
Euston Tower. Tottenham Court Road had become a place of entertainment by the mid-17th century. In 1645, three people were fined for drinking on a Sunday. A Gooseberry Fair was held sporadically throughout the century, and featured numerous booths with street entertainers. The
Horse Shoe Brewery was established in 1764 on the junction of Tottenham Court Road and
Oxford Street. The current Horseshoe pub was built in the 19th century.
Whitefield's Tabernacle was built in 1756 for the Reverend
George Whitefield, and subsequently became the world's largest Methodist church after it was extended in 1760. It was rebuilt in 1857 after being destroyed by fire, and again in 1888 after the building collapsed. It was bombed during the
Second World War and rebuilt as the Memorial Chapel. Tottenham Court Road was predominantly rural in nature until well into the 19th century. When
Heal's was established on former farmland, the lease stipulated there must be appropriate accommodation for 40 cows. These cowsheds were destroyed in a fire in 1877. A 17th-century farmhouse at the rear of No. 196 Tottenham Court Road was demolished in 1917. Other residents of
India House and members of
Abhinav Bharat practised shooting at the range and rehearsed assassinations they planned to carry out. Also in 1909, it was reported in a police investigation that the range was being used by two
Suffragettes in a possible conspiracy to assassinate prime minister
H. H. Asquith. It was also where Donald Lesbini shot Alice Eliza Storey.
R v Lesbini (1914) was a case establishing in
common law that with regard to
voluntary manslaughter a reasonable man always has reasonable powers of self-control and is never intoxicated. The shooting range was owned and run by Henry Stanton Morley (1875–1916). ==Transport==