Tavistock Square

Tavistock Square, looking north,BMA House on the right
Interactive map of Tavistock Square
Namesake	Marquess of Tavistock
Location	Bloomsbury,London Borough of Camden,Inner London
Postal code	WC1
Coordinates	51°31′30″N0°07′44″W / 51.5249903°N 0.1289968°W /51.5249903; -0.1289968

Tavistock Square is a publicsquare inBloomsbury, in theLondon Borough of Camden nearEuston Station.

Tavistock Square was built shortly after 1806 by the property developerJames Burton and themaster builderThomas Cubitt forFrancis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford, and formed part of theBedford Estate in London, owned by theDukes of Bedford.^[1] The square takes its name fromMarquess of Tavistock, acourtesy title given to the eldest sons of the Dukes of Bedford.^[2]

In 1920 theTavistock Clinic was founded in the square, a pioneering psychiatric clinic whose patients includedshell-shock victims of theFirst World War.^[3] In 1946 theTavistock Institute of Human Relations separated from the Tavistock Clinic. The Tavistock Clinic has since moved toSwiss Cottage.^[3]

Richard Lydekker,naturalist, geologist and writer of numerous books onnatural history, was born at Tavistock Square in 1849.^[4]

Tavistock Square was the scene of one of the four suicide bombings on7 July 2005. The bomb was detonated by 18-year-oldHasib Hussain on adouble-decker bus bearing routenumber 30; it had been diverted from its normal route along Euston Road because of traffic disruption by the other three bombings attube stations. The bomb exploded immediately outside theBritish Medical Association building, many of whose staff came out to give what help they could. The explosion killed 13 passengers, plus Hussain himself. Many others were injured.^[5] In September 2018, a memorial honouring the victims and the efforts of those who gave assistance was unveiled in Tavistock Square Gardens, replacing a plaque that had been fixed to the railings outside BMA House, opposite to the new site.^[6]

The centre-piece of the gardens is a statue ofMahatma Gandhi, sculpted byFredda Brilliant and installed in 1968. The hollow pedestal was intended, and is used, for people to leave floral tributes to the peace campaigner and nonviolent resister to oppression inSouth Africa andBritish rule inIndia.^[7]

A cherry tree was planted in 1967 in memory of the victims of theatomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.^[8]

A generation later, in 1994, theConscientious Objectors Commemorative Stone commemorating "men and womenconscientious objectors all over the world and in every age" by Hugh Court was unveiled.^[9]

These three features have led to the square unofficially being regarded by some as a peace park or garden, and annual ceremonies are held at each of these memorials.^[8]

A bust of the writerVirginia Woolf, cast from a 1931 sculpture byStephen Tomlin (1901–1937), was unveiled in 2004 at the southwest corner of the square. Woolf lived at 52 Tavistock Square between 1924 and 1939. From there she and her husbandLeonard Woolf ran theHogarth Press, which became a prominent and influential publisher at the forefront of modernist fiction and poetry (publishingT.S. Eliot,E.M. Forster andKatherine Mansfield among others) and translating the works ofSigmund Freud into English.^[10]

The square contains a memorial to the surgeon DameLouisa Aldrich-Blake (1865 –1925), with a bust of Aldrich-Blake byArthur George Walker on a plinth designed by SirEdwin Lutyens.^[11]

The following buildings are on Tavistock Square:

• Tavistock House, home ofJames Burton while he developed the area and then ofCharles Dickens, was on the east side of the square. Ablue plaque on BMA House commemorates him. It was demolished in 1901.^[12]
• "BMA House", the headquarters of theBritish Medical Association, designed bySir Edwin Lutyens in 1911^[13] is on the east side (on the site previously occupied by Tavistock House) and is a grade IIlisted building.^[14]
• Connaught Hall, aUniversity of London hall of residence, which was built in the early 19th century, is on the west side of the square and is a grade IIlisted building.^[15]
• Woburn House, on the north side of the square contains the headquarters ofUniversities UK, the conference ofuniversityrectors, and the headquarters of theMedical Schools Council, an organisation which represents the interests and ambitions of UK medical schools.^[16]
• The Tavistock Hotel, a branch of Imperial London Hotels, completed in 1951 is on the south side of the square.^[17]
• Lynton House^[18] and Tavis House,^[19] both substantial red-brick office blocks on the east side, were built in the mid-20th century.^[20]
• Passfield Hall, a hall of residence for undergraduates of theLondon School of Economics.^[21]

• 
  Statue of Mahatma Gandhi, Tavistock Square from the east
• 
  Plaque at the base of the Hiroshima cherry tree amid fallen blossoms
• 
  Conscientious Objectors Commemorative Stone, on the north side of the square
• 
  Conscientious Objectors Stone inscription
• 
  Memorial to Louisa Aldrich-Blake
• 
  Blue plaque onBMA House commemoratingDickens andTavistock House

• List of eponymous roads in London
• Bedford Square
• Russell Square
• Bloomsbury Square
• Gordon Square
• Torrington Square
• Woburn Square

• Map sources and aerial photos.

51°31′30″N0°07′45″W / 51.5250°N 0.1291°W /51.5250; -0.1291

• Squares in the London Borough of Camden
• July 2005 London bombings
• Bloomsbury
• James Burton (property developer) buildings
• Garden squares in London
• Bloomsbury Group locations

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