Detail from Queen Square, in Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, 1812
Queen Square in Bloomsbury is a little oasis hidden away close to the very heart of London. Now largely surrounded by hospitals, and often full of hospital patients and visitors, you can also spot a few surviving early 18thc houses on part of one side, amidst the institutions, hotels and outposts of medical empires.
The square itself is now not much more than a small public park with inscribed benches , statues and other memorials. But it has not always been like that. Indeed when it was built Queen Square was a prestigious residential address and remained so for well over a hundred years.
The view over Queen Square from the northern end, http://www.rightmove.co.uk
Read on to find out more about the history of one of London’s oldest squares: its foundation, slow decline and new role as a place of calm and quiet for Londoners today, as well as being virtually synonymous with The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.
When I’m researching garden history I often find myself thumbing through the pages of Gardeners’ Chronicle, probably the most famous horticultural magazine ever published. It’s the best source for everyday life in the gardening world in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Today was no exception, except that I got side-tracked from my planned piece when I realised that I was looking at the volume for 1866 and thought it might be fun to see what was going on in the horticultural world 150 years ago.
The Garden History Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.