Gordon Square Gardens: a hidden history

On leaving the RCGP headquarters in Euston Square, turn right, cross Euston Road, walk a couple of blocks down Gordon Street, and you will arrive at a special place — Gordon Square Gardens.

Gordon Square is best known and celebrated because of its history of famous residents, including members of the Bloomsbury group, who ‘lived in squares and loved in triangles’, such as the Bells, the Stephens (Virginia Woolf), Lytton Strachey, and the economist John Maynard Keynes and his Russian ballerina wife Lydia Lopokova.¹ Less well known, there is something else quite special about Gordon Square Gardens.

Its twin garden in Tavistock Square, 200 metres to the east (across from BMA House), has a formal Georgian design, dividing the space into four quadrants. In stark contrast, Gordon Square Gardens only has right angles in its corners, where they cannot be avoided. The rest of the space has little formal design, with curving paths, open grass, and scattered trees. The effect is informal and relaxing, with an ambience that is unusual in Central London. A kiosk selling …