Gloucester Crescent is an 1840s Victorian residential crescent in Camden Town in London which from the early 1960s gained a bohemian reputation as “the trendiest street in London” and "Britain's cleverest street" when it became home for many British writers, artists and intellectuals including Jonathan Miller, George Melly, Alan Bennett and Alice Thomas Ellis.
Gloucester Crescent was designed in the Italianate style by the architect Henry Bassett, and completed in the 1840s. It runs off the nearby Oval Road. Many of the homes on the crescent are Grade II listed buildings including no. 23, the terraces nos. 3 to 22 and 24 to 29, and nos. 60 and 61.
The London branch of the School of Sound Recording is located in The Rotunda at 42 Gloucester Crescent.
In popular culture
The former home of playwright and author Alan Bennett at 23 Gloucester Crescent is the setting for his memoir and play The Lady in the Van, which were based on his experiences with the eccentric woman known to him as Miss Shepherd who lived on Bennett's driveway in a series of dilapidated vans for more than 15 years. The story of Miss Shepherd was first published in 1989 as an essay in the London Review of Books. In 1990 Bennett published it in book form. In 1999 he adapted it into a stage play at the Queen's Theatre in London which starred Maggie Smith who received a Best Actress nomination at the 2000 Olivier Awards and which was directed by Nicholas Hytner. The stage play includes two characters named Alan Bennett. On 21 February 2009 it was broadcast as a radio play on BBC Radio 4, with Smith reprising her role and Bennett playing himself. He adapted the story again for the 2015 film The Lady in the Van with Smith reprising her role again, and Hytner directing again.
Principal photography for the film version The Lady in the Van (2015) began at 23 Gloucester Crescent in 2014. The film was shot in and around Bennett's old house in Camden Town, where the real Miss Shepherd spent 15 years on his driveway. According to Hytner, they never considered filming anywhere else.
In 2018 William Miller, son of Sir Jonathan Miller, published Gloucester Crescent: Me, My Dad and Other Grown-Ups based on his memories of growing up on Gloucester Crescent in the 1960s and the famous residents and visitors he encountered.William Miller, Gloucester Crescent: Me, My Dad and Other Grown-Ups, Profile Books (2018)
The biographer Claire Tomalin published her autobiography A Life of My Own (2017) which included much detail of her life on Gloucester Crescent where she has lived since the 1960s.Claire Tomalin, A Life of My Own, Viking (2017)
Notable residents
No 19: One of the founding professors of the Guild Hall of Music, George Thomas Palmer, from early 1880's to 1930 No 22: the writer and essayist Alice Thomas Ellis lived here from 1960 to 2001 with her husband the publisher Colin Haycraft until his death.The remarkable story of the cleverest street in Britain – The Oldie 1 February 2018Jonathan Miller says farewell to Britain's cleverest street – The Oldie 28 November 2019 Since 2001 the house has belonged to photographer and film director Malcolm Venville. No. 23: writer Alan Bennett and vagrant Margaret Fairchild lived at the Grade II listed building – Bennett in the house, and Fairchild in a series of dilapidated vans parked on the driveway, as immortalised in Bennett's memoir, stage play and film.My love letter to Gloucester Crescent: Author William Miller on what it was like growing up in the bohemian NW1 enclave – Kentish Towner website No. 29: Carol Barnes, newsreader with ITN, lived here. No. 36: from 1843 the artist and etcher Lionel Percy Smythe.Lionel Percy Smythe – Barnsley Art on Your Doorstep (2014)No 39: the British television journalist and broadcaster Joan Thirkettle (1947-1996) who notably worked for ITN for over 20 years Profile of Lionel Percy Smythe (1839–1918) – Royal Museums Greenwich Collection No. 55: the journalist and musician George Melly (1926–2007) from 1964 to 1971.Almost Famous: website of Nina Stibbe The writer Nina Stibbe wrote a hugely successful memoir, Love, Nina, about working as a nanny for the journalist Mary-Kay Wilmers and her then husband, film-director Stephen Frears who bought the house from Melly in 1971. No. 57: since 1963 the home of author Claire Tomalin and her husband journalist Nicholas Tomalin (and later, Claire's second husband Michael Frayn).Life and times in NW1: The hard, privileged life of a literary biographer – Times Literary Supplement 10 November 2017Book Review: Gloucester Crescent by William Miller – The Jewish Chronicle No. 63: the polymath Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) and his family from 1961.Gloucester Crescent, and a trip down memory lane – Camden New Journal 31 August 2018Jonathan Wolfe Miller – Companies House database No. 68: the artist Walter Sickert and member of the Camden Town Group was living here in 1912.The Camden Town Group in Context – A History of Camden Town 1895–1914 – Tate No. 69: Ursula Vaughan Williams, widow of Ralph Vaughan Williams; theatre director Max Stafford-Clark.Letter from Ursula Vaughan Williams to Alan Bush – Letter No.: VWL3696 – The Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams database The current owner is William Miller, son of Jonathan Miller who lived three doors away at No. 63. No. 70: Catherine Dickens after her separation from her husband Charles Dickens in 1858.Kate Bassett, In Two Minds: a Biography of Jonathan Miller: A Biography of Jonathan Miller, Oberon Books Ltd (2012) – Google Books p. 124
Other residents included the novelist and screenwriter Deborah Moggach;Gloucester Crescent by William Miller review – my dad Jonathan Miller and me – The Guardian 24 August 2018 writer Susannah Clapp; poet and playwright Louis MacNeice and the Labour MP Giles Radice. and editor Mary-Kay Wilmers
Murder Edith Eleanora Humphries was murdered at 1 Gloucester Crescent on 17 October 1941. She was found in her night clothes with her throat cut and was taken to hospital but died soon after. Her murder is unsolved.
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