Park of the week

177. Bloomsbury Square

This garden square, near the British Museum, is one of the oldest in London. Some sources say that it’s the oldest.
The square was developed for the 4th Earl of Southampton in 1665 and formed part of the Bedford Estate. The garden was redesigned in the early 19th Century by Humphry Repton, the successor to Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. He coined the term 'landscape gardening’ to describe his approach of marrying the skills of the landscape painter with those of the practical gardener. 

The literary critic and writer Isaac D'Israeli lived at number 6 from 1817 to 1829 and for part of that time his son, the future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli lived with him. He dropped the apostrophe from his surname at the age of 17, when he began working for a firm of solicitors in the City of London. In the 20th century most of the buildings came to be used as offices.

The southern end of the Square was redesigned in the mid-20th Century to a geometric pattern. Further alterations took place in 1971-3, when an underground car park was built under the square and the gardens were redesigned to their present layout. There’s an extensive central paved area, surrounded by tree-shaded lawns, with three large, slightly raised islands of grass with flowering shrubs and some perennials and bedding. There are lawns, a flower garden and a children’s playground but no café or toilets. The garden is Grade II listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

This engraved plaque in the central paving shows the first Bloomsbury square as it would have looked in diarist John Evelyn’s time, when it was called Southampton Square, with a quotation from his diary in 1665: "Dined at my Lord Treasurers the Earle of Southampton in Blomesbury, where he was building a noble square or piazza, a little towne."

Judith Field

Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2HL