After he left Ireland, Shaw lived in a number of rooms and lodging houses mainly in north and west London. In the late 1870's he lived at 13 Victoria Grove off the Brompton Road.
Then he lived with his mother and sister in an unfurnished flat on the second floor of 37 Fitzroy Street off Marylebone Road. Here he was often ill, but close to the British Museum and its reading room. In April 1882 he moved into 36 Osnaburgh Street to the east of Regent's Park. Today a post war building leaves no trace of the environment he knew there.
In March 1887 he moved to 29 Fitzroy Square (right) with his mother and sister in a house which was later lived in by Virginia Woolf. He later bought the lease for his mother although he described it as 'a most repulsive house'. There was no bathroom and the sanitary arrangements had no place in the original plans'.
After his marriage in 1898 he lived in Charlotte's home in Adelphi Terrace in the Aldwych later demolished. The Shaw's then lived in Digswell, on the edge of Welwyn. It was from here that they moved to Ayot St Lawrence in 1906. Charlotte bought another flat at 4 Whitehall Court to replace the Adelphi flat, to meet their need for a London theatre-land base.
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