University of London Estate

The southern end of the square is dominated by the Senate House.

Birkbeck, University of London and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) are located here. To the southwest is Malet Street and to the southeast is Russell Square.

The square is the site of a weekly farmers' market, held on a Thursday.

Gordon Square was developed by Thomas Cubitt in the 1820s, alongside neighbouring Tavistock Square.

The original planting and layout of the square was personally designed and supervised by John Russell, the sixth Duke of Bedford, who named it after Lady Georgiana Gordon, his second wife.

Gordon Square is often considered the centre of the infamous Bloomsbury Group, the set of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists.

The Bloomsbury Group’s ‘Thursday evenings’ began at 46 Gordon Square, where friends including Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, David Garnett, Duncan Grant, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry and Saxon Sidney-Turner would join Virginia and Vanessa Stephen at their home for recitals and conversations.

After marrying Clive and Vanessa Bell lived at number 46 until 1917, when economist John Maynard Keynes moved in.

Writer and biographer Lytton Strachey lived at number 51 from 1909-24, while his brother James lived at number 41 from 1919-56, with his wife Alix.

Built between 1829 and 1847 Woburn Square was designed by Thomas Cubit, who also worked on the east front of Buckingham Palace and Osborne House, Queen Victoria’s Isle of Wight retreat.

The Square was installed to improve the pre-existing swamp land, with an original construction of 41 houses. Built on the boundary between the parishes of St. Pancras and Holborn, the boundary marker stones are still visible today.

While the smallest of all the Bloomsbury Squares, Woburn Square was originally much longer, extending towards Russell Square. However, the church on the site was demolished in the late 1960s to make way for the Institute of Education building, and an additional extension of SOAS in 1974 further reduced the size of the square. Both extensions were designed by Sir Denys Lasdun, who was also the architect of the Royal National Theatre on the South Bank.

In the Garden is displayed ‘The Green Man’, sculpted by Lydia Kapinska (1999) inspired by The Waves the Bloomsbury Group’s Virginia Woolf. The sculpture’s plaque reads:

“My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre.

I am green as a yew tree in the shade of the hedge. My hair is made of leaves. I am rooted to the middle of the earth. My body is a stalk. I press the stalk.

The roots make a skeleton on the ground, with dead leaves heaped in the angles.”

The Sunken Gardens

The gardens were bought by the University of London in 1951, to act as a private garden. The entrance is on Malet Street and has public opening hours.

Prior to being bought by the University the quiet site was formerly the rear gardens of Nos. 2 – 20 Gower Street, a terrace built around 1780 as part of the Bedford Estate. Owners of houses on the street included Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, pioneer of women’s suffrage and Lady Ottoline Morrell, literary hostess and patron of the arts.

The gardens originally had wrought-iron railing stubs on the walls, to keep access exclusive to the residents. However, the original railings were removed during WWII to assist the war effort. However, there are rumours the materials never were transformed into the weapons they were intended to be. Some say the drive for those in England to produce scrap iron may have been a morale booster, as many of the materials were simply discarded in the Thames.

The North Quad is a green space situated between Senate House and SOAS.