Queen's Square

Queen square, a beautiful New (tho' small) Square, of very fine Buildings. On the N. side of the Broad Way, near Tuthil str. Westminster, betn which, and the Broadway, is a New str. Erecting, not yet Named. This Square is from Cha+ SWly 830 Yes. See Statues.

Queen's square, St. James's Park.

Queen-Square, Westminster,—about the middle of the S. side of St. James's Park, leading to the Broadway and York-st.

Queen-Sq.—is in Westminster, between the Broadway and the middle of the south side of St. James's-park.

Queen Square, Westminster, originally Queen Anne's Square and now, with Park Street, called Queen Anne's Gate. At the upper end of the square is a standing statue of Queen Anne.

Queen Square, a beautiful new (though small) square of very fine buildings on the north side of the Broadway, near Tuthill Street, Westminster, between which and the Broadway is a new street erecting, not yet named. There is also another square of this name designed, at the north end of Devonshire Street, near Red Lion Square.—Hatton, 1708, p. 67.

Queen Square was the freehold estate of Sir Theodore Jansen, one of the Directors of the South Sea Company, in the great bubble year of 1720, and was seized and sold towards the payment of the debts of the said Company, by commissioners authorised by 7 George I. c. I, and subsequent statutes. In the early part of the 18th century Lord Grey and Lord North resided in this square, and "Lords Guernsey, Derby, and Dartmouth had town-mansions near it."¹ Admiral Edward Vernon, the captor of Portobello, was born in this square, November 12, 1684; and the Rev. C.M. Cracherode, who bequeathed his splendid library to the British Museum, was born here in 1729. When Thomson was soliciting the patronage of Speaker Compton to the second edition of the Winter, he wrote his letters (June 1726) from "Long's Coffee House in Queen Square, Westminster." Jonathan Richardson, the painter, and writer on painting, died at his house in Queen Square, May 28, 1745, and his son, of the same name, in 1770. Peg Woffington died here March 28, 1760. Sir William Browne, the distinguished physician, and founder of the gold medals for Greek and Latin odes and epigrams at Cambridge University, died at his house in Queen Square, May 10, 1774. At her house in this square Miss Frances Reynolds, the sister to Sir Joshua, so often mentioned by Boswell, died November 1, 1807, aged eighty. In No. 2 Queen Square Place lived the notorious Theresa Constantia Philips, and in a detached dwelling in "Queen Square Place," looking on the garden-ground of Milton's house in Petty France, Jeremy Bentham died, in 1832. He bought the property about 1772, and spent upon it "full £10,000," as he states in a Memorial to the Treasury dated 1773, against the erection of the contemplated barracks near his house. Here Sir Mark Isambard Brunel was living when working out the details of his famous block-making machinery.

At the time when my father must have been busy working out the details of the block machinery (the idea I believe originated with him while in America) he was living in the white house which stands back from Bird-Cage Walk, near the Barracks. I believe it is now called No. 1 Queen's Square Place, and had been, I think, the house of Jeremy Bentham.—I.K. Brunel to P. Cunningham, April 23, 1853.

The white house was pulled down to make way for the huge Queen Anne's Mansions.

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¹ Walcott's Westminster, p. 75.