A fabulous and energetic area that regularly sees celebrities and performances, Leicester Square is a much-loved part of the city with a plentiful history. Women would lay out clothing to dry, and cows grazed close by.
In , the square was laid out, and was named after the contemporary Leicester House, which was named after the second Earl of Leicester. Towards the end of the 18th century, Leicester House was pulled down and the square became more down-market.
Retail establishments were built and thrived, and the area became a centre of entertainment in the capital. Numerous theatres were built throughout the 19th century, and these were subsequently adapted to be cinemas in the 20th century. Nowadays, the area is dense with expensive and nationally important cinemas, including the Odeon Leicester Square and the Empire Leicester Square, which are both regularly used for film premieres.
Radio stations, casinos and other culturally significant establishments are located in the square, as well as many successful restaurants and bars. The park in the centre has been home to statues of William Hogarth, Charlie Chaplin, John Hunt, Sir Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare, and the discounted theatre ticket office Theatreland is also situated amongst the greenery.
Leicester Square drives in countless tourists, hosts events for Chinese New Year, and was also refurbished for the London Olympics. With features of the old and new city combined into one, Leicester Square is definitely a favourite for locals and visitors in London. We and our partners use cookies to better understand your needs, improve performance and provide you with personalised content and advertisements.
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Follow Londonist Londonist. Follow londonist. Report a problem Something wrong with this article? Let us know here. The Bishop of Salisbury's Burnet's son is said to be of the gang. They are all Whigs. He, too, had his abode in Leicester Field in , the year of his greatest literary activity. As we have already mentioned, Leicester House was the first element of the "square," and as buildings gradually grew up around, it formed the boundary on the north side.
The house itself stood well back, having a spacious courtyard in front as well as an extensive garden in the rear. Northouck describes the house in as "a large brick building, with a wide courtyard before. Leicester House was of brick, two storeys, and an attic, and with a range of nine windows in front. In the house was taken down, and maps of , such as Horwood's and Edward Waters', show the building along the north side completed as now.
The enclosure had two rows of trees round it, and was laid out with cross walks; various maps exhibit different arrangements of trees and walks. Leicester House was the abode of the Sidneys—that noble family of which, in the sixteenth century, Sir Henry Sidney, "the wisest, greatest, and justest Lord-Deputy Ireland ever had," and his more famous son Philip, were the great ornaments.
Giles's Road, and over it the citizens of Westminster had right of common, though the fee-simple was in St. Giles's, St. James's, and other hospitals. Before another century had elapsed those common rights had passed away, before that determined progress from east to west, which building in London has made in generation after generation. At Leicester House the Sidneys dwelt all through the troublous times of the Commonwealth to the end of the century, their leading spirit being the unhappy Algernon Sidney, the pure patriot and impracticable politician who was persecuted both by Cromwell and Charles II.
Leicester House was for a short time the residence of the Princess Elizabeth, only daughter or James I. Besides the Queen of Bohemia—the "Queen of Hearts," as she was called by all who came under the magic of her influence—Leicester House was inhabited in the last century by other royal and noble personages. Pepys tells us in his "Diary," under date October 21st, , that he paid a visit to the French ambassador, Colbert, at Leicester House. Evelyn records a dinner he had at Leicester House with the grave and gay Anne, Countess of Sunderland, when she sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater, to exhibit his prowess before them.
In , the house was let to the Imperial ambassador, who, in , there received Prince Eugene as his guest, when "on a secret mission to prevent peace from being arranged between Great Britain and France," as we have already noticed. There, between and , lived the Princes of Wales, when a Prince of Wales was always at deadly feud with the head of his house. George II. In his day life in Leicester House was as dull as ditch-water, and not much purer; and when he succeeded to the throne in , Frederick Prince of Wales though he lived for a short time in Norfolk House, in St.
The king never visited his son during his illness, and received the news when playing cards with the Countess Walmoden with the cool expression, " Fritz ist todt. An amusing story relating to the childhood of George III. At length the king stopped his coach, and called to him. Here, as we are reminded by Peter Cunningham, the Princess of Wales was waited upon by the wife of the unfortunate Earl of Cromartie, who was so deeply involved in the fatal Scottish rising of She came leading in her hand her four little children, the sight of whom ought to have roused a feeling of sympathy in a maternal heart.
The Dowager Princess of Wales continued to live in Leicester House till , when she removed to Carlton House; and about the same time occurred the last incident connected with royalty in Leicester Fields—the death, at Saville House, of Prince Frederick William, the youngest brother of the king, aged sixteen.
While tenanted by the Royal family, the evenings at Leicester House were often enlivened by private theatricals, in which it is recorded that the future king of England and his brothers acted their childish parts with ability and spirit. Leicester House subsequently became occupied by private persons, and was at one time used by Sir Ashton Lever as a Museum of Natural History. In Sir Ashton presented a petition to the House of Commons, praying to be allowed to dispose of his museum by a lottery, as Alderman Boydell had done with his gallery.
Sir Ashton proposed that his whole museum should go together, and that there should be 40, tickets at one guinea each, but of this number only 8, tickets were sold. However, the proprietor allowed the lottery to take place, and although he held 28, tickets, he lost his museum, which was won by a Mr.
Parkinson, who only held two. The house was finally pulled down in , and the site is now bounded on the west by Leicester Place, a wide thoroughfare leading to Lisle Street. New Lisle Street was built in on the site of the gardens of Leicester House. Adjoining Leicester House, on the west, stood, until very recently, a large mansion, called Saville House, formerly the residence of the patriotic Sir George Saville, who was many years Knight of the Shire for the County of York, ancestor of the Earls and Marquises of Halifax, and who introduced the Catholic Relief Bill, which led to the Gordon riots in Saville House, it is well known, occupied nearly the centre of the northern side of the square.
It has been, however, as Mr. Timbs remarks in his "Romance of London," frequently confounded with Leicester House, which it adjoined. The latter house, however, stood at the north-eastern extremity, and to this mansion was added Saville House, a communication being made between the two houses for the children of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Saville House was likewise called Ailesbury House, and here Thomas, third Earl of Ailesbury, entertained Peter the Great, when he visited England in the year ; and here, too, in all probability, the Czar enjoyed his pet tipple with his boon companion, the Marquis of Carmarthen, as we have already stated.
The house passed into the Saville family through the marriage of Lord Ailesbury's son and successor, Charles, third and last Earl of Ailesbury of that creation, who married Lady Ann Saville, eldest daughter and co-heir of Sir William Saville, second Marquis of Halifax.
At any rate, Sir George Saville, Bart. The house, in the Gordon riots, was stripped of its valuable furniture, books, and pictures, which the rioters burnt in the square; and the iron rails were torn from the front of the house and used by the mob as weapons. Saville House was rebuilt early in the present century, and soon became a sort of "Noah's Ark," for exhibition purposes. Here Miss Linwood exhibited her needlework, from the year until her death in ; and here, too, the National Political Union held its reform meetings, recalling the storms of the previous century.
Then came a succession of prodigies of nature and art. Amongst the latter were a large moving panorama of the Mississippi River, and a series of views of New Zealand; concerts and balls, and exhibitions of too questionable a shape for us to detail.
Part of the house, on being refitted after the Gordon riots, was occupied by a carpet manufacturer, and subsequently by Messrs. Stagg and Mantle, drapers and silk mercers; and also by Messrs. Bickers and Bush, extensive booksellers. The eastern wing of it was for many years the show-room of Miss Linwood's exhibition of needlework, as mentioned above, which enjoyed a popularity second only to that of Madame Tussaud's exhibition of wax-work in Baker Street.
This exhibition gave a new name to Saville House, it being known for nearly half a century as the Linwood Gallery.
It comprised about sixty copies of the best and finest pictures of the English and foreign schools of art, all executed by the most delicate handicraft with the needle, the tapestry "possessing all the correct drawing, just colouring, and light and shade of the original pictures from which they are copied.
After enjoying half a century of popularity, the exhibition came to an end in , and the pictures were sold by auction, realising only a comparative trifle. No less than 3, guineas had been refused for the chief work, viz. The rooms which they occupied were then turned into a concert and ballroom, and made use of for entertainments of a very questionable character; but they were burnt down in February, , the Prince of Wales being among the spectators of the destruction of the house once inhabited by his ancestors.
The house has never since been rebuilt. The outer walls remained standing, displaying a placard-board styling the dreary place as the Denmark Theatre, and thus hinting that it belongs to some company, limited or otherwise, which never passed beyond the embryo state. Underneath Saville House are some extensive apartments, to which we gain descent by a flight of a few steps from the street. The chief room, often called the "theatre," has been used for various exhibitions from time to time, including "Miller's Mechanical and Picturesque Representations," consisting of seven views of cities, "the figures of which," says a prospectus in , "are impressed with movements peculiar to each, so as to imitate the operations of nature.
Britton tells us, in , "has been lately opened as one of those singular establishments called bazaars. A large house, No. Here duchesses and marchionesses, ladies and fair daughters of the aristocracy sat to the monarch of the world of art, to be immortalised by his brush.
Here Burke and Foote, Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson, Garrick and Boswell, and most of the celebrated men of the last century, were in the habit of assembling, and of dining almost every week at the hospitable board of the great portrait painter.
His house here, we are told, was magnificently proportioned; it possessed one of the finest staircases in London; it was fitted up with exquisite taste, and it was the rendezvous of the literary world.
Here Sir Joshua worked with the greatest assiduity until the last, and only ended his laborious toil, which was, however, to him a labour of love, with his life. Of Sir Joshua Reynolds who died here in it would be presumptuous to say a word of praise, beyond quoting the words of Edmund Burke:—"Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on very many accounts, one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of his elegant arts to the other glories of his country.
In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portrait-painting he was beyond them, for he communicated to that description of the art in which English artists are the most engaged a variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve, when they delineated individual nature.
In painting portraits, he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to be derived from his paintings.
He possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher. In full affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art, and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candour never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation; nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinising eye in any part of his conduct or discourse.
His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters, his social virtues in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death.
He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow. Sir Joshua Reynolds' handsome house was next held by the Earl of Inchiquin; then by a society as the Western Literary and Scientific Institution; and it was subsequently taken by Messrs.
Puttick and Simpson, the eminent auctioneers, who removed hither from Piccadilly. The actual apartment used as their auction-room was Sir Joshua's studio. Allan Cunningham, in his "Lives of Painters," gives us the following peep into Sir Joshua Reynolds' painting-room a century ago, and an insight into his regular habits:—. The window was small and square, and the sill nine feet from the floor.
His sitters' chair moved on castors, and stood above the floor about a foot and a half. He held his palettes by the handle, and the sticks of his brushes were eighteen inches long. He wrought standing, and with great celerity; he rose early, breakfasted at nine, entered his study at ten, examined designs or touched unfinished portraits till eleven brought a sitter, painted till four, then dressed, and gave the evening to company.
The first London residence of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the pupil and successor of Sir Joshua Reynolds as the fashionable portrait painter of the day, was over a confectioner's shop, at No.
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