Introduction
Gray's Inn South Square
Gray's Inn Gardens
Red Lion Square
Bloomsbury Square
Statue of Charles James Fox
Bedford Place
Russell Square
Queen Square
Coram's Fields
Mecklenburgh Square
St George's Gardens
Brunswick Square
Tavistock Square
Gordon Square
Woburn Square
Torrington Square
Bedford Square
Introduction
Photo: Mayson Beaton Collection, English Heritage
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Directions
The walk begins at Chancery Lane underground station and
ends at Tottenham Court Road underground station. The walk will take
about three hours to complete, depending
upon the time spent in gardens.
Most of the gardens are
open to the public during the day, with the
exception of Gray's Inn, which is open during weekdays only from 12
noon
to 2.30pm. Mecklenburgh and Bedford Squares are private, but open to the
public during
Open Garden Squares Weekend .The
gardens are accessible
to wheelchairs, except where stated.
Please be aware of your personal
safety and
security when walking. Use this walk in conjunction with a detailed street
map and use
designated road crossings where possible.
Description
This walk explores some of the oldest and most notable
of
London's squares, from the time of Charles II to the reign of Queen
Victoria. Along the way you will meet some
of the many characters who
have lived in the squares over the years.
For further information on Bloomsbury squares and gardens, please see
www.bloomsburysquares.org.uk
Gray's Inn South Square
Directions
Begin the walk at Chancery Lane
underground station.
Leaving the station, follow the signs for Exit 1 and Gray's Inn Road,
which take
you out into High Holborn. Gray's Inn Road is behind you, and
the Reed Employment Agency is on your right.
Walk up High Holborn, past Holland and Barrett, towards the Cittie of
Yorke pub. Just before the
pub, turn right into Gray's Inn .
If you are doing the walk at a weekend, when
Gray's
Inn is not open, continue on and turn right into Brownlow Street.
Turn left at the end, then right into Bedford
Row and left into Princeton
Street, which takes you to Red Lion Square .
Go through the arch straight ahead into South Square. Turn
right and walk around the square, where No. 1 is
immediately on your right. Continue around the square.
On your right is the Hall. Beyond the Hall is Gray's
Inn Square.
If you are visiting this garden on Open Garden Squares Weekend, be careful to check the opening times.
Description
Gray's Inn is one of the four remaining Inns of Court,
founded in 1370
as a place for lawyers to live and study. The Inn is
named after Reginald de Grey, Chief Justice of Chester,
whose London
house was where the Inn began.
No. 1 South Square is where Victorian author and
journalist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) once worked as an office boy.
Gray's Inn provided a setting for parts of
the action in several of
Dickens' novels, including Martin Chuzzlewit and David Copperfield.
At
the end of the square is a statue of essayist, historian and
statesman Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who lived at
the Inn from 1576
until his death in 1626. As Lord Chancellor he has been credited with
bringing greater
fairness and impartiality to the English legal system.
However, he was himself convicted of taking bribes, for
which he was fined
£40,000 and imprisoned in the Tower of London.
On your right is the Hall, which
dates from 1560. It was
the venue for the first performance of Shakespeare's play, A Comedy
of
Errors in 1594. The Hall was badly damaged in the Second World
War, but has since been restored.
Beyond the Hall is Gray's Inn Square. Both this
and South Square have 20th century garden layouts.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Gray's Inn Gardens
Directions
Between South Square and Gray's Inn
Square, level with the Hall is a
passage into Field Court. Go through here and the entrance to Gray's Inn
Gardens is on the right.
There are gravel paths in the gardens, which may be difficult for
wheelchairs. For a paved route, continue past the gates and follow signs
for Atkin Building and Raymond
Buildings. This will bring you to the
exit on Theobald's Road.
To walk through the gardens, go
through the gates.
From here you either can walk along the main central path ahead of you and
up a
flight of steps at the end, or, for a route which avoids steps, bear
left and walk along the parapet overlooking
the gardens.
If you are visiting this garden on Open Garden Squares Weekend, be careful to check the opening times.
Description
Gray's Inn Gardens were originally laid out by Sir
Francis Bacon in the early
1600s with cherry, birch and groves of elms.
There was a mount with a pavilion on the terrace to the west, a
bowling
green and a kitchen garden. The design was simplified in the mid-1700s
by a 'Mr Brown' -
probably Capability Brown.
The poet Shelley (1792-1822), who was severely in debt, used to meet
his future wife Mary Godwin (1797-1851) here in secret on Sundays, which
was the only day of the week when
debtors could not be arrested.
The buildings on the west side of the garden date
from the early
1800s. The dark grey buildings are Raymond Buildings, where
Charles Dickens also worked as a solicitor's clerk,
earning 15 shillings a
week. Utterly bored, he amused himself by dropping cherry stones on the
heads of
passers-by.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Red Lion Square
Directions
At the northern end of the garden, turn
left to exit into Theobald's
Road, opposite the Holborn Library and Archive Centre. Turn left, cross
over Jockey's Fields and take the next left into Bedford Row. Half way
down, turn right into Princeton Street,
carry on across Red Lion Street
and into Red Lion Square . Go round to the left and stop outside No.
17.
Walk along and cross the road, entering the garden through the gate
opposite Summit House.
Enter the square garden, and walk around it anticlockwise.
Description
Red Lion Square was laid out between 1698 and
1700 by Dr Nicholas Barbon
(1637-1699), and was named after the nearby Red Lion Inn in Holborn.
Barbon was
one of the major developers in the early history of London
squares, who pursued profits ruthlessly and dishonestly.
He routinely
ignored the law and often demolished buildings and built new houses
without the permission of
the owners. He forced through the development of
Red Lion Square in his usual style, facing down fierce opposition
from the
lawyers of Gray's Inn, which led on one occasion to a physical fight
between Barbon's men and
the lawyers.
Most of the buildings around the square were replaced in the 19th and
20th centuries,
but numbers 14 to 17 are houses originally built by
Nicholas Barbon around 1686, which were re-fronted in the 19th
century.
Number 17, where you are standing, was briefly the residence of poet
and painter Dante
Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), who founded the
Pre-Raphaelite school of painting. Five years later, he recommended
the
rooms to his friends William Morris (1834-1896) and Edward Burne-Jones
(1833-1898), despite their
dampness and decrepitude. It was here that
Morris first tried his hand at furniture and textile design, producing
the
first of the medieval-style furnishings which gave rise to the Arts and
Crafts movement. Burne-Jones
too began to paint the quasi-medieval
subjects for which he later became famous.
In 1861 Morris,
Burne-Jones and Rossetti set up a
design business together at No. 8 Red Lion Square, to produce
high-
quality furniture and fittings using traditional craft methods. Their
housekeeper, known as 'Red Lion Mary', did
much of the sewing and
tapestry, and also contributed to some of Morris's designs.
On
the corner of Summit House is a plaque to John
Harrison (1693-1776) who lived at number 12. He invented the
marine
chronometer, the first accurate nautical instrument to plot longitude.
Another 18th-
century resident of the square,
philanthropist and merchant Jonas Hanway (1712-1786) is reputed to have
been the first habitual user of an umbrella in London. He teamed this with
a sword, which by that time was a most
unfashionable article of
apparel!
The body of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was popularly
believed to have been buried where the square now stands. In 1660 when
Charles II returned from exile, he took
his revenge on all those who had
supported the Parliamentary cause. The leading parliamentarians, Oliver
Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton were all dead, but in 1661
Charles had their bodies dug up and given a
trial for regicide. They
were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The bodies of Cromwell and
Ireton were kept overnight at the Red Lion Inn before being taken to
Tyburn and hanged. One version of the story
goes that the corpses were
substituted for others, and Cromwell's body was in fact buried in Red
Lion
Square. Whatever the facts, the square is now said to be haunted by
the men. Many claim to have seen the three,
deep in conversation,
walking diagonally across the square, only to vanish gradually as they
pass the
centre of the garden.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Bloomsbury Square
Directions
Leave Red Lion Square via the west gate,
opposite the statue of Fenner
Brockway, and turn right. Cross at the traffic lights towards Transport
House, turn left and continue across Old Gloucester Street and
Southampton Row. Continue along Vernon Place and
turn right into
Bloomsbury Square .
Enter the square via the gate on the left and walk
to the central paved plaza.
Description
In the central paved plaza there is a quotation engraved in the
stone, from John Evelyn's Diary of 1665:
‘Dined at my Lord Treasurer's the Earl
of Southampton
in Bloomsbury, where he was building an oval square or piazza, a little
town.’
After the Great Fire of London in 1666, wealthy Londoners did not
want to
return to the crowded, dangerous conditions of the old medieval
City. The new estates being built by landowners
in the countryside to
the west of London offered a new way of life, and became London's first
suburbs.
Bloomsbury, then on the northern edge of London, had, in the words of
Dr Everard
Maynwaringe,
‘…the best air and finest prospect, being the
highest ground…A fit place for
nobility and gentry to reside…there
being the country air, pleasure and city conveniences joined
together.’
The underlying pattern of Bloomsbury, with the diverse shapes and
sizes of the squares, can be traced from the fields and closes from
which the estate developed.
Bloomsbury Square was the centrepiece of the Bloomsbury Estate, which
was developed from the 1660s to the 1850s.
It was the first square to be
called a ‘square’, and was laid out by the 4th Earl of Southampton as
the forecourt to his grand London home. If you look to the north, you
can see a terrace of Regency
houses, built by James Burton, just beyond
which the mansion once stood.
On the remaining three
sides of the square, the Earl sold plots of
land to builders on 42-year leases, at rents of around £6 per year,
for
the construction of what he stipulated must be high-quality housing.
Gradually, the up-market
houses of the square were surrounded by more
modest streets, shops and services, creating a new, self-contained
estate for the wealthy classes who flocked to live there.
The enterprising Earl's new
building-lease system proved very
profitable, and was enthusiastically adopted by other aristocrats
developing their estates around London.
The estate fell into the hands of the dukes of Bedford as a result
of
Lord William Russell's marriage to the Earl of Southampton's daughter,
Lady Rachel, in 1669.
Building slowed for the next century, but in 1800
the fifth Duke of Bedford, Francis Russell (1765-1802), was
keen to
continue development, and he had his mansion torn down to make way for
more houses. By 1819,
the estate was generating half of the family's
considerable income.
Originally the garden at
the centre of the square was very plain,
with grass divided into eight parts by four crossing paths. In 1807 the
Duke commissioned leading landscape gardener Humphry Repton (1752-1818)
to design a new garden, which
he laid out in the high style of the day
with curving paths, a formal lime walk and shrubberies.
The square remained private, for the use of residents only, right up
to the Second World War, when its
railings were removed to be melted
down for armaments. This allowed other people to come into the square
for the first time, and in 1950 it was officially made public.
The gardens have recently been restored,
combining elements of
Repton's design with the earlier 18th-century layout of paths, and a mix
of
shrubs and herbaceous plants, laid out as they would have been in
Regency times.
Many rich,
famous and influential people have lived in the square
over the years. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729), one of the
earliest
journalists and an MP, who founded both The Tatler and The Spectator
magazines, lived here in
the late 17th century.
The Arts and Crafts architect Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) lived here in
the early 20th century. Already well-known as a designer of country
houses, where he collaborated with the
celebrated garden designer
Gertrude Jekyll, it was during this time that he received his first
major
public commission for the buildings at the heart of Hampstead
Garden Suburb.
Looking across to
the west, you can see White Hall, where Dr Robert
Willan (1757-1812) lived for the last 12 years of his life. A
dermatologist, Willan was the first person to classify diseases of the
skin. He was also an advocate
of the curative effect of mineral waters,
and in 1803 published the luridly-titled Account of the Dreadful
Effects
of Dram-Drinking.
Looking a little further to the left, No. 6 was home to
Benjamin
Disraeli (1804-1881), who lived here from the age of 13 between 1817 and
1824. Disraeli went
on to become the leader of the Tory Party and was
Prime Minister twice, as well as a popular novelist. The plaque
on the
house is dedicated to his father, Isaac, who was also a novelist.
The residence of
William Murray, Earl of Mansfield
(1705-1793), was also once in Bloomsbury Square. During the Gordon Riots
of 1780, the Earl's house and precious library were attacked and burned by
anti-Catholic rioters. In the
subsequent trial of the riot leader, Lord
George Gordon, the Earl himself was the judge. He treated the accused so
impartially that Gordon was actually acquitted of the charges against
him.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Statue of Charles James Fox
Directions
From the piazza, walk towards
the northern end of the square, exit,
and walk round to the statue of Charles James Fox .
Description
Charles James Fox (1749-1806), whose statue stands at the north end of the square, was a leading Whig politician in the
late 18th century. His statue, by Sir Richard Westmacott, faces that of the fifth Duke of Bedford, also by Westmacott, along
Bedford Place.
Fox and the Duke were both Whigs, and were political allies as well as great friends. Both
were part of the glittering Devonshire set, the leading social clique of the day, which centred around the highly-
fashionable Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. The Duke declined to join in with the excessive gambling which his friends
enjoyed, but he helped to pay Fox's considerable gambling debts, and left him £5000 in his will.
Bedford Place
Directions
Cross Great Russell Street with care and continue
along Bedford Place towards Russell Square.
At the end of Bedford Place, cross the busy road very carefully
owards the statue of Francis Russell, the fifth Duke of Bedford.
Description
You are now walking through what was
once the private garden of the Duke
of Bedford's mansion, laid out by the fourth duke with groves of limes
and acacias, gravel walks and a greenhouse for growing melons. The end
of the garden had a raised terrace
walk, which covered earthwork
fortifications put up by the Parliamentarians to defend London during
the English Civil Wars.
The statue of Francis Russell shows the Duke with one hand resting on a
plough and the other holding some ears of corn. He was well-known for
his interest in the improvement of
agriculture and maintained a model
farm of some 4000 acres at Woburn, his country estate.
Russell Square
Directions
Enter Russell Square to the right of the
statue, turn left and walk around the gardens clockwise past the statue and then right onto the inner horseshoe path. Walk
along this path with the fountain plaza on your right.
Description
Russell Square was founded by the fifth Duke in
1799, and became the
largest square in London, eclipsing Grosvenor Square. The houses were the
work of
builder James Burton (1761-1837), the most successful developer at
that time. His workforce was so large, that In
1804, when Britain was
threatened with invasion, Burton raised a 1000-strong regiment of men,
with
architects and foremen as officers, to protect the borders of the new
town they were creating.
As with
Bloomsbury Square, the Duke commissioned Humphry Repton to
design the gardens.
Repton's design
included a broad perimeter walk (with high hedges to
screen the walk from the street) and a horseshoe-shaped
central walk under
two rows of clipped lime trees. There was a trellis-covered shelter at the
centre, with
eight seats, which cleverly concealed the gardeners' shed in
a small courtyard at the centre.
The
eighteenth century poets William Cowper (1731-1800) and Thomas Gray
(1716-71) both had lodgings in Russell Square.
Gray praised the square for
its ‘air and sunshine and quiet’.
The 20th-century poet,
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), lived at 28 Bedford Place
and had his offices at 24 Russell Square (in the western corner),
where he
was director of Faber & Faber, which specialised in publishing poetry.
While here, Eliot
endured increasingly bizarre behaviour from his
estranged wife, who was mentally ill. She would march up and down
the
pavement outside the offices, wearing a sandwich board which proclaimed
‘I am the wife that
T.S. Eliot abandoned.’
On one occasion she poured a tureen
of hot chocolate through the letter-box
of his office door. It was here at
the age of 68 that Eliot proposed to his second wife, Valerie, who was 38
years his junior.
No. 21 was home to lawyer and MP Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818).
From 1806, as
Solicitor-General, he worked hard to reform the criminal
justice system, reducing sentences and cutting the number
of petty crimes
which carried the death penalty, such as pick-pocketing. He was also a
vocal opponent of
slavery and supported the campaign for Catholic
emancipation. In 1818, overcome with grief at the sudden death of
his
beloved wife, the grief-stricken Romilly killed himself.
Also on the west side of the square is
a cabmen's shelter of 1897. It
was part of a network built between 1875 and 1914 by the Cabmen's Shelter
Fund. The Fund was founded by Captain George Armstrong, managing editor of
The Globe newspaper, after he failed to
find a cab because all the drivers
were in the pub. Victorian cabmen were notorious for their drunkenness,
having nowhere else but the pub to shelter in bad weather. The
alcohol-free shelters offered tables and benches,
with even a kitchen for
cooking meals, and are still in use by London's cab drivers.
The Victorian
architect G.E. Street (1824-1881) lived at 51 Russell
Square. He designed more than 260 buildings, of which his
masterpiece was
the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, the stress of which drove him
to an early grave
before the building was completed.
No. 61 was where Mrs Humphry Ward (1851-1920) lived from 1881. She
was a tireless supporter of good causes, an opponent of the death penalty
and a prolific novelist, but was
strongly opposed to votes for women. In a
public debate on the subject in 1909, she lost by 235 votes to 74 and
vowed never to take part in such a debate again.
Mrs Ward would not have see eye to eye with one of her
neighbours,
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), who lived at number eight with her family
from 1888 to 1893.
Emmeline was leader of the campaign for women's
suffrage, and her daughters Sylvia (1882-1960) and Christabel
(1880-1958)
were considerably influenced in their own development as political
activists by the people
they met during their time here. The house was a
centre for political gatherings of socialists, Fabians,
anarchists,
suffragists, freethinkers and radicals, and the young Pankhursts helped
out at these meetings
from an early age.
The theatre impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte
(1844-1901) lived at 71 Russell
Square. Founder of the D'Oyly Carte Opera
Company, and promoter of works of Gilbert and Sullivan, he also built
the
Savoy Theatre and Savoy Hotel.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Queen Square
Directions
Walk towards the Café in the Gardens. There is an accessible toilet
here. Leave the square via the gate to the rear of the café. Cross at
the traffic lights and turn right past the front of the Hotel Russell
and left into Guilford Street. Cross over Herbrand Street and continue
on for a short way, crossing over opposite the entrance to an
underground car park. Take the pedestrian path beside it, which
continues through into Queen Square .
Walk straight ahead and enter the square garden by
the gate on the left. Walk to the middle of the square
Leave the square by the gate ahead of you and look to the left.
Description
Queen Square was originally known as Devonshire Square
and was laid out in 1716 on land owned by Sir Nathaniel Curzon. It was
renamed in honour of Queen Anne, the reigning monarch.
Houses were built around the square from 1713 to 1725, but the north
end was left open to give a view of the villages of Hampstead and
Highgate. The writer Fanny Burney (1752-1840) lived on the south side of
the square in the 1770s, and wrote in her novel, Evelina, of the
‘beautiful prospect’ from her house ‘of the hills,
ever verdant and smiling’.
An Act of 1832 provided that the square was to be ‘used and enjoyed
by the inhabitants thereof in such a manner as the Trustees shall
direct’. It was maintained by a rate ‘not exceeding one shilling in the
pound, assessed on buildings around the square’.
Looking north, you will see a lead statue of a queen in ornamental
robes, which originally held a sceptre. It is thought to be of Queen
Charlotte, wife of George III, but could possibly be Queen Anne or Mary
II.
A circular paved area on the north lawn marks the spot where a
Zeppelin bomb fell during the First World War. Although around 1000
people slept in the surrounding buildings, no-one was injured. During
World War 2 around 2,000 people slept in an air-raid shelter beneath the
square.
To the south, the church of St George the Martyr, established in
1706, was once known as the sweeps' church because kind parishioners
provided Christmas dinners for 100 chimney sweeps' apprentices or
‘climbing boys’. It was here that poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath
married in June 1956.
The Queen's Larder at number one dates from 1710. Tradition has it
that Queen Charlotte rented a cellar under a beer shop to store the
king's food while her deranged husband, George III was being treated by
his doctor, Dr Willis, for his recurrent bouts of madness.
The square is also notable for the number of medical institutions
based here. The London Homeopathic Hospital has been here since 1859,
and the Italian Hospital since 1884, when Holborn was the main location
for London's Italian community.
The National Hospital for Neurology and
Neurosurgery stands on the site of No. 29, once the home of Jerome K.
Jerome (1859-1927). Jerome was a railway clerk who became an actor and
then went on to write the Victorian classic and bestseller Three Men
in a Boat (1889).
In 1865, William Morris moved his furnishings business,
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co, from nearby Red Lion Square into
number 26. Morris and his family lived ‘over the shop’, which was on the
ground floor, and a ballroom was converted into workshops at the back.
It was during this time that Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Janey, William
Morris's wife, fell in love – a relationship that was to cause Morris
great pain, although he never tried to interfere.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Coram's Fields
Photo: Coram's Fields and Harmsworth Memorial Playground
Directions
Cross the road on the NE side of Queen Square, turn right and walk past the Royal London Homeopathic
Hospital, turning left into Great Ormond Street. At the junction with
Lamb's Conduit Street, turn left and walk up towards Coram's Fields ,
crossing at the zebra crossing.
If you have a child with you, you can enter the
playground, otherwise there is a reasonably good view of the site through
the iron railings.
Description
Coram's Fields are what remains of the forecourt of the
18th-century Foundling Hospital established by Captain Thomas Coram
(1668-1751), a retired shipwright and entrepreneur, who was shocked by
the numbers of destitute children he saw each day in the streets of
London. About a thousand illegitimate babies were being abandoned,
either dead or dying, each year, but there was no organization to care
for them.
The Captain gained support for his project slowly, and after 17 years
of campaigning and fund-raising, work began in 1742 to build the Hospital
on 56 acres of Lamb's Conduit Fields, bought from Lord Salisbury for
£6,500.
The Hospital was an instant success, and was a popular cause for the
rich and famous. The composer George Frideric Handel conducted annual
performances of his Messiah in the Hospital chapel, raising £7000. The
artist William Hogarth was another supporter from the outset. Under his
influence, the Hospital became a public art gallery, filled with work
given by the best artists of the time, including Thomas Gainsborough and
Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Jonas Hanway, the man with the umbrella and sword, whom we met in Red
Lion Square, became a governor of the Hospital in 1756. He worked to
expose the abuse of children, and in the 1760s was responsible for new
laws which required parishes to take some responsibility for children in
their areas.
The Hospital was demolished in 1926, but the
colonnaded Georgian buildings of the original forecourt remain. The
central pavilion, with its frieze of children at play, was built in 1936,
and the forecourt preserved as a children's playground.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Mecklenburgh Square
Directions
With your back to the gates of Coram's Fields, turn left and walk up
Guilford Street. Turn left into Mecklenburgh Place, and walk on into
Mecklenburgh Square .
Walk round the square, stopping opposite No. 21.
Continue round the square.
If you are visiting this garden on Open Garden Squares Weekend, be careful to check the opening times.
Description
Mecklenburgh Square is part of the Foundling Estate,
one of two new residential squares planned in 1790 by Samuel Pepys
Cockerell to provide rental income to support the Hospital and to keep
the surrounding land airy and open.
The square was eventually designed by Joseph Kay,
as Cockerell had fallen out with the Hospital governors. It was named
after Queen Charlotte, who before her marriage was Princess of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The garden was also laid out by Kay around 1810, and
remains close to the original design, with mature planes and other
ornamental trees, formal lawns and gravel paths.
Richard Henry Tawney (1880-1962), who is commemorated
with a blue plaque at No. 21, was clearly fond of the square, living at four
different houses: first at number 17, then number 44 and after the war
at number 26, before finally settling at number 21. A Christian
Socialist and professor at the London School of Economics, Tawney was
one of the leading left-wing thinkers of the 20th century, a critic of
capitalism and a strong influence on Labour governments after the Second
World War.
Syed Ahmed Kahn (1817-1898) was a Muslim reformer
and scholar who also lived at number 21. As a magistrate in the service of
the East India Company, Khan saved thousands of British lives during the
Indian Mutiny of 1857, and became the first Muslim to be knighted. He
studied the English university system while living here, and founded a
university at Aligarh on his return, which has educated many Indian Muslim
leaders. He was a pioneer of Islamic modernism and social reform.
William Goodenough House now stands on the site of
No. 37, where Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived from 1939 to 1940.
Further along at No. 44 there is a plaque to Hilda Doolittle,
American Imagist poet and writer. Doolittle was married to novelist
Richard Aldington, whose mistress, an American called Dorothy Yorke,
lived in another part of the house. In 1917 Dorothy had her friend D.H.
Lawrence to stay, who wrote part of the novel Women in Love while he was
here. Also at No. 44, the crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers
lived from 1918 to 1921, where she created her most famous character,
Lord Peter Wimsey.
Further information on LGT Inventory
St George's Gardens
Directions
Retrace your steps to the corner of the square, turn left into
Mecklenburgh Street and left again into Heathcote Street. At the end of
the street, go through the wrought- iron gates on the right into St
George's Gardens .
Description
The three-acre St George's Gardens were once a meadow,
bought in 1713 to make a burial ground for two churches – St George
Bloomsbury and St George the Martyr, which you saw in Queen Square. It
was the first burial ground in London to be located away from its
church. The two cemeteries were originally divided by a brick wall and
had separate entrances.
Among the many hundreds buried here was Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838),
a leading figure in the campaign to abolish the slave trade in 1807, and
editor of the Anti-Slavery Reporter . As a young man, he had worked on a
plantation and witnessed the horrors of slavery at first hand. He was
also governor of a colony of freed slaves in Africa. He died in 1838,
five years after slavery was finally made illegal.
The burial grounds became full up and were closed
around 1854, and after a period of neglect were re-opened in 1889 as part
of the movement to make overgrown graveyards and other urban spaces into
‘open air sitting rooms for the poor’.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Brunswick Square
Directions
Walk through St George's Gardens, out through the gates at the west end and
straight ahead along Handel Street. Turn left into Hunter Street and
walk down to Brunswick Square . Turn left into the square.
Cross the road and go through the gate into the gardens.
Description
Brunswick Square was built by James Burton between 1795
and 1802, under the supervision of Thomas Merryweather, secretary of the
Foundling Hospital. The gardens were laid out and railed in 1799. The
square was named after Caroline of Brunswick, the Prince Regent's wife.
Sadly, many of the houses around the square were
bombed in the Second World War, and it has been extensively rebuilt. The
garden has been recently restored to its 18th-century appearance, and its
railings, which were lost in the war, replaced.
On your left, the University of London School of Pharmacy now occupies the
site of Nos 27 and 38. Novelist E.M. Forster (1879-1970), author of
books such as A Passage to India and A Room with a View ,
lived at number 27 from 1925 to 1930. He then moved next door for a
further 10 years. His permanent home was in Surrey with his mother, but
the flat in town allowed him to meet his various male acquaintances away
from her watchful eye.
Virginia Stephen, better known by her married name as author Virginia
Woolf (1882-1941), lived at No. 38 from 1911 to 1912, sharing the house
with her brother Adrian, painter Duncan Grant and economist John Maynard
Keynes, some of the key members of what later became known as the
Bloomsbury Group.
A little further on, 40 Brunswick Square is the new house built
in the 1920s for the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children on the part of
the old Hospital gardens. The building now houses the Foundling Museum,
with a notable collection of paintings, including works by Hogarth,
Reynolds and Gainsborough. The museum has a pleasant café overlooking the
square and accessible toilets.
Outside the museum is a statue of Captain Thomas
Coram, by William Macmillan, installed in 1963.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Tavistock Square
Directions
At the junction with of Tavistock Place Woburn Place, cross at the traffic lights and
continue on, turning right into Tavistock Square Garden . This entrance
has steps: to avoid these, use one of the three entrances on the other
sides of the garden, which are sloped.
Walk towards the statue of Gandhi at the centre.
Leave the square via the gate on the west side, behind the statue of
Gandhi.
Description
Also part of the Bedford Estate, Tavistock Square was
established by the fifth Duke of Bedford in 1800, at the same time as
Russell Square, although the garden was not laid out until 1825. The
houses were built first by James Burton and completed from the 1820s by
Thomas Cubitt. The present layout of the garden dates from the late
1800s.
Thomas Cubitt (1788-1855) was the leading developer of the early 19th
century. He was the first large-scale commercial builder, employing his
own workforce, including dozens of brick-makers, masons, plasterers and
painters. He also had a professional staff of architects and surveyors,
as well as his own legal and letting departments. From 1821 he completed
Burton's work in Bloomsbury.
Looking to the south you will see the Tavistock Hotel, which stands
on the site of number 52, where Virginia and Leonard Woolf lived from
1924 to 1939. Virginia wrote many of her best-known novels here,
including To the Lighthouse and The Waves , and the house was also the
first home of the Hogarth Press, run by Leonard Woolf.
Also in the square is a bronze bust of Louisa
Aldrich-Blake (1865-1925), who was the first woman in Britain to become a
Master of Surgery and went on to become Dean of the London School of
Medicine for Women. She was also renowned for her skill at cricket and
boxing!
The statue of Mohandas Gandhi, by Polish sculptor Fredda
Brilliant, was unveiled in 1968. Gandhi (1869-1948) was the founding
father of independent India, having trained as a barrister at the Inner
Temple in London. After the First World War, he became the main Indian
nationalist leader, directing the struggle against the British
authorities, using non-violent tactics of ‘passive resistance’. He
became universally known as ‘Mahatma’, meaning ‘great soul’, and
eventually saw India gain independence in 1947.
A beech tree was planted in the square in his memory by Jawaharlal
Nehru (1889-1964), a close associate of Gandhi's in the nationalist
struggle, and the first Prime Minister of independent India from 1947 to
1964. Looking to the north eastern corner of the square, the British
Medical Association headquarters now occupies the site of Tavistock
House, an 18-room mansion, where Charles Dickens lived from 1851 until
1860. While here, he wrote Bleak House , Hard Times , Little
Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities . He also entertained other
literary friends, such as Wilkie Collins (author of The Woman in
White and The Moonstone ) and Hans Christian
Anderson. It was here that his marriage became increasingly strained. In
1857 Dickens fell in love with an 18-year-old actress, and the following
year he and his wife parted. Two years later Dickens sold up and left
London for good.
On the wall opposite the west gate at No. 33, is a plaque to
barrister Mohammed Ali Abbas, one of the founders of Pakistan.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Gordon Square
Directions
Turn right and leave Tavistock Square by turning left into Endsleigh Place.
Continue on into Gordon Square . Turn left and walk down the road to
No. 46.
Turn around and retrace your steps, entering the square by the gate
opposite No. 45. The square garden has recently been restored.
Description
Like Tavistock Square, Gordon Square was established as
part of the Bedford Estate in 1800, but Cubitt did not begin building
until the 1820s. The square was named after Lady Georgiana Gordon,
second wife of the sixth Duke of Bedford, and the garden was designed by
the Duke himself with a complex layout of curving paths and shrubberies.
No. 46 was home from 1904 to 1907 to Virginia
Stephen and her sister Vanessa, after the death of their father, Sir
Leslie Stephen. The house was the early focus of what became known as
the Bloomsbury Group, a network of artists, writers and critics, who
delighted in ‘the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of
beautiful things’.
Vanessa (1879-1961), who was one of the first abstract painters in
Britain, married art critic and writer Clive Bell in 1907 and they
continued to live in the house until 1916, while Virginia moved to
Fitzroy Square and then Brunswick Square with her brother Adrian.
The ‘Bloomsberries’, as they were known, were notorious for their
sexual entanglements, and have been referred to as ‘couples who live in
squares and have triangular relationships’. The painter Duncan Grant had
affairs with Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes and Virginia and
Vanessa's brother Adrian before settling into a long liaison with
Vanessa herself. From 1915 they lived virtually as man and wife,
co-existing quite happily with her husband Clive Bell, who had many love
affairs of his own.
Economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) moved into No. 46 with
the Bells, and took over the lease in 1918, staying there for the rest
of his life. He astonished his Bloomsbury friends by falling in love
with, and marrying, Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova in 1925. This was
despite his apparently low first opinion of her, commenting to a friend:
"She's a rotten dancer - she has such a stiff bottom." They
settled down together at No. 46 and she continued to live there for
two more years after his death.
Another member of the group was Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), who
lived at Nos 41 and 51. Strachey was a well-known historical
biographer, who wrote Emminent Victorians and Elizabeth and
Essex . So many members of the group were living in the square, that
Lytton observed to Virginia Woolf:
"Very soon I foresee that the whole square will become a sort of
college, and the rencontres in the garden I should shudder to think
of."
In the 1960s, Strachey's biographer, Michael
Holroyd, found an unpublished work of Strachey's on Warren Hastings in the
cellar of the house. It then got thrown out by accident, leading to a
tussle in the street between Holroyd and the dustmen.
In a memoir of old Bloomsbury, Virginia Woolf wrote of Gordon Square:
‘It was astonishing to stand at the drawing room window and look into
all those trees; the tree which shoots its branches up into the air and
lets them fall in a shower; the tree which glistens after the rain like
the body of a seal.’
Across the square is Dr Williams' Library, built in Tudor Revival
style in 1848. There is a blue plaque to Robert Travers Herford
(1860-1950) on the wall, who lived and worked here from 1914 to 1925. A
Unitarian minister, Herford was a pioneering scholar of Judaism and
confronted some of the most deeply-rooted assumptions of anti-Semitism
at a time when, in the build up to the Second World War, such matters
were of much more than academic significance.
Christ Church, which adjoins the Library, contains
an altarpiece by Sir Edward Burne-Jones in memory of Christina Rossetti,
poet and sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Woburn Square
Directions
Leave Gordon Square via the gate past the small café kiosk. Cross at the
zebra crossing and enter Woburn Square , which has also recently been
restored.
Description
Woburn Square was laid out by the Duke of Bedford in the 1830s, and was named after his country estate at Woburn Abbey. The Green Man statue is by Lydia Kapinska.
Further information on LGT Inventory
Torrington Square
Directions
Walk through Woburn Square, turn right outside the gate and continue
along the pedestrian walkway into Torrington Square , which has been
re-landscaped in contemporary style. Cross the road and walk to the
right along the centre of the square. At the end is another view of
Christ Church.
Turn back and walk up the square towards the University of London
Senate Building, passing Birkbeck College on the right. Turn right at
the end and leave the University precinct, turning left into Malet
Street. Walk along to the zebra crossing outside the front of Senate
House.
Description
Much of the original building has disappeared, but the
Georgian terrace containing number 30 remains. Christina Rossetti
(1830-1894) lived here with two aunts from 1877 until she died, in great
pain from cancer. She wrote many poems, including Goblin Market and the
lyrics to the Christmas carol, In The Bleak Mid-Winter .
The Senate House served as the Ministry of Information
during the Second World War. Its staff included many well-known writers,
such as Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Dorothy L. Sayers, and it became
the model for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984 .
Further information on LGT Inventory
Bedford Square
Directions
Go over the zebra crossing in Malet Street, turn left and cross Keppel Street. Go past
Malet Street Gardens on your right and turn right into Montague Place.
Cross Gower Street at the traffic lights, cross again into the
pedestrian zone around Bedford Square and stop opposite No. 13.
Walk round the square clockwise, keeping the garden on your right.
Stop opposite No. 6.
Continue along to the corner of the square to No. 1.
Continue around the square to No. 53.
At the corner of the square, close to the junction with Adeline Place,
look across the square to No. 35
Leave the square via Adeline Place and walk to Great Russell Street,
crossing Bedford Avenue. Turn right at Great Russell Street and then
left into Tottenham Court Road, where the walk ends at Tottenham Court
Road underground station
If you are visiting this garden on Open Garden Squares Weekend, be careful to check the opening times.
Description
Bedford Square is the finest surviving Georgian square in London, laid out
between 1775 and 1780 as a show-piece for the next phase of the Bedford
Estate. Despite the success of Bloomsbury Square, the Earls of Bedford had
been slow to continue developing. The fourth duke eventually drew up the
plans for Bedford Square, and after his death, his widow forged ahead with
the building.
The square's architect, Thomas Leverton (1743-1824), lived at No. 13
from 1795 until his death. His design was notable for the ‘palace front’,
used on each side to make the terraced houses look like a single country
mansion, and was much copied.
No. 13 was also the birthplace of Sir Harry Ricardo (1885-1974),
designer of advanced aircraft engines, who lived here until 1911. He had a
workshop in the basement of the house where he built his first internal
combustion engine at the age of 17.
Looking back to the corner of Gower Street, No.
11 was where natural philosopher Henry Cavendish (1731-1810) lived from
1786 until his death. He had a museum, a laboratory and a library of some
12,000 volumes in his house. He was so reclusive that he ordered his
dinner by leaving a note on the hall table for his servants. His female
staff were under threat of instant dismissal if ever he were to catch
sight of them. He was also notoriously frugal; but, when he died, he left a
fortune of almost one million pounds to his relatives.
No. 6 was home to the deeply unpopular Lord Eldon (1751-1838). He served as
Lord Chancellor almost continuously from 1801 to 1827, and vigorously
opposed all the great reforming causes of the day, such as the abolition
of slavery and an end to using children as chimney sweeps. He also helped
to pass the Corn Laws, which led to a huge rise in the price of bread, a
staple item in the diet of the poor. In 1815 an enraged mob gathered
outside his house and began to smash windows. Eldon met them on the
doorstep, brandishing a shotgun, while Lady Eldon ran for help. Luckily
for the rioters, Eldon was such a bad a shot that his brother Lord Stowell
once declared that he had killed nothing but time.
At No. 1 lived Weedon Grossmith (1854-1919), who illustrated and,
with his brother George, co-wrote the comic masterpiece The Diary of a
Nobody , published in 1892. Their character, Charles Pooter, was
ancestor to many of the comic characters we know today, such as Reggie
Perrin, Basil Fawlty and David Brent.
Number 53 was home for nearly 20 years to Lewis Cubitt (1799-1883),
brother of the master-builder Thomas Cubitt, and himself the original
architect of King's Cross station. Lewis was in partnership with Thomas
during the 1820s, and it is thought that a great many of the buildings in
Bloomsbury and Belgravia were built to designs by Lewis.
At No. 52 the poet and future poet laureate Robert Bridges
(1844-1930) lived with his mother while in his early thirties. He was then
doctor at both the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children and
Barts' casualty department, where he was expected to diagnose the ailments
of more than 75 patients per hour. In 1881 he gave up medicine and left
London for the country, to concentrate on writing poetry full-time.
No. 49 is where Ram Mohun Roy (1772-1833), a reformer and pioneer of
Indian journalism, stayed in 1831 while in England to push for
improvements to British rule in India. His involvement in the campaign
against the practice of suttee, where widows were burnt on a pyre
alongside the bodies of their dead husbands, led to the practice being
outlawed in 1829.
Next door at No. 48, a Ladies' College was founded by Elisabeth
Jesser Reid (1789-1866) in 1849. Just over 30 years later it became a
School of the University of London, and in 1909 received a royal charter
as Bedford College for Women. As well as being passionate about higher
education for women, Reid was an ardent slavery abolitionist and in 1860
hosted Sarah Redmond, the first black woman to make a public lecture tour
in Britain.
No. 44 was home to Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), famed for the
many parties she held to court the leading artistic figures of the day.
Henry James, Aldous Huxley, T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence all came to her
house, as well as members of the Bloomsbury Group. When she first met
Eliot, she found him ‘dull, dull, dull’, but they became firm friends when
they discovered a mutual love of music-halls, and visited many together.
Ottoline was much ridiculed for her flamboyant style, with scarlet
platform shoes, huge hats and elaborate costumes in highly coloured
velvets and brocades.
At No. 42 architect William Butterfield (1814-1900) lived for the
last years of his life. Butterfield was one of the leading lights of the
Gothic Revival in Victorian architecture, and designed over 100 churches,
as well as Keble College, Oxford. He was a ruthless perfectionist, who,
when visiting stained glass workshops, would put his umbrella through any
work he disliked.
Also at No. 42, critic and literary editor Cyril Connolly
(1903-1974) lived in the top flat during the Second World War. He was
famously greedy and lazy, preferring to spend the entire morning in bed
and in his bath. He was also famously ugly, but apparently irresistible to
women and he had many affairs. At the start of the London Blitz in 1940 he
and some friends, who had arrived for tea, went up on the roof to watch an
air raid, Connolly announcing: ‘It's a judgement on us. It's the end of
capitalism.’
At number 41, novelist Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863-1933) lived from 1903
to 1917. He is better known as plain Anthony Hope, who moved here ten
years after writing his swashbuckling thriller, The Prisoner of Zenda, in 1894.
Two well-known Victorian medical men lived at No. 35 at different times. Thomas
Hodgkin (1798-1866) was a doctor, reformer and philanthropist who
identified the glandular disease which is named after him. He campaigned
against oppression of indigenous peoples, and was one of the founders of
the Aborigines' Protection Society in 1838. He also did a lot of work to
help London's poor, in particular persecuted Jews, often treating his
poorer patients free of charge.
Also resident here was Thomas Wakley (1795-1862), who as well as being
a doctor was also an MP, coroner and reformer. He founded Britain's
leading medical journal The Lancet in 1823, which promoted medical reform,
and introduced legislation in 1860 which outlawed the adulteration of food
and drink. As a coroner, Wakley insisted on establishing the cause of all
sudden or suspicious deaths, particularly among the poor, and exposing
employers' negligence or mistreatment of their workers.
At No. 31, Sir Edwin Lutyens lived from 1914 to
1919, after he left Bloomsbury Square. While here, he became architect to
the Imperial War Graves Commission and designed the Cenotaph in Whitehall
as a memorial to all those who died in the First World War.
Further information on LGT Inventory
