Skip to main content

Main menu

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers

User menu

  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
British Journal of General Practice
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in
  • Follow bjgp on Twitter
  • Visit bjgp on Facebook
  • Blog
  • Listen to BJGP podcast
  • Subscribe BJGP on YouTube
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
British Journal of General Practice

Advanced Search

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
Life & Times

Gordon Square Gardens: a hidden history

A Haven Close to the College

Graham Watt
British Journal of General Practice 2017; 67 (662): 413-414. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X692405
Graham Watt
University of Glasgow, Glasgow. E-mail:
Roles: Emeritus Professor
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: graham.watt@glasgow.ac.uk
  • Article
  • Figures & Data
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

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 Viennese coffee and light lunches makes it a pleasant place to sit for a while and reflect with WH Davies: ‘What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?’ 2 Many of the surrounding street names, such as Woburn Place, Endsleigh Street, Tavistock Square, and Russell Square, are familiar to doctors visiting the BMA and RCGP. Less well known is their common connection to the Duchy of Bedford, which owned and developed this part of London in the early 19th century. Woburn Abbey is the main residence of the dukes of Bedford. Tavistock and Endsleigh were Bedford properties in Devon. The family name is Russell.

Figure
  • Download figure
  • Open in new tab
  • Download powerpoint

Georgiana Russell (née Gordon), Duchess of Bedford by Samuel William Reynolds, after John Hoppner, published 1803 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Figure
  • Download figure
  • Open in new tab
  • Download powerpoint

An image of Gordon Square Gardens as taken by the author.

THE BEDFORDS

Gordon Square was named by the 6th Duke of Bedford after his wife’s family. His mother-in-law was born Jane Maxwell in Edinburgh, the daughter of minor aristocrats, whose notoriety began as a teenager riding a pig down Edinburgh’s High Street. By marrying the Duke of Gordon, she became a duchess, based at Castle Gordon near Fochabers in Banffshire. On entering high society in London, she entertained riotously, wearing tartan when it was still proscribed, introducing Highland dancing to the capital, and becoming a favourite of George III. Famously, she won a wager with the Prince Regent, recruiting 1000 men to the Gordon Highlanders by offering each recruit a guinea and a kiss. After her death in 1812 she was buried at Kinrara near Aviemore where her memorial stone records, on her instructions, the marriages of her four surviving daughters — to three dukes and a marquis, a matchmaking achievement that may never be equalled.

The youngest daughter, Georgina Gordon, married the 6th Duke of Bedford, one of the richest men in England, followed her mother into London society, and lived flamboyantly, extravagantly, and generously at home and abroad. The Russells were Whigs. As the Duke’s second wife, she was stepmother to Lord John Russell, who steered the 1832 Reform Act through parliament, became prime minister, and whose grandson was the philosopher Bertrand Russell. She had a long affair with Edwin Landseer, the Victorian painter, who was 20 years her junior and by whom she is said to have had a child.

Mother and daughter often returned to Scotland for prolonged stays at Kinrara, a cottage, and the Doune, a small country house, which still stand in the glorious surroundings of pine forests, heather moors, green pastures, lochs, hills, and mountains next to the river Spey. They frequently entertained, subjecting visitors to traditional Highland hospitality, with whisky, fiddling, piping, and dancing in large measure.

The 6th Duchess had a penchant for rural tranquillity, which with the Duke’s money she was able to recreate, most notably at their retreat at Endsleigh (now a prize-winning country hotel) on the edge of Dartmoor. She also had built a remote hamlet of huts and bothies (of which only vestiges remain) far up Glen Feshie, on the western side of the Cairngorm mountains, where she and Landseer could disappear for weeks at a time.

In those days, it took 3 weeks to get to their Scottish retreats. Now, leaving every weekday at 21.15, the Caledonian sleeper from Euston does it in 10 hours, the station announcement being nothing less than a tone poem (‘calling at Stirling, Dunblane, Gleneagles, Perth, Dunkeld and Birnam, Pitlochry, Blair Atholl, Dalwhinnie, Newtonmore, Kingussie, Aviemore, and Inverness’).

Gordon Square Gardens were designed in the early 1830s, with an informal layout including curved paths. Although it was 60 years before the current layout was fully established, it is tempting to suggest that it was the Duchess’s wish to create a rural idyll in London, in keeping with their properties in Scotland and Devon.

Robert Burns, one of whose early patrons was the Duchess of Gordon and who visited Castle Gordon in 1787 when Georgina Gordon was 6, caught the sentiment precisely:3

‘My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here

My heart’s in the Highlands, a chasing the deer

Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe

My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.’

  • © British Journal of General Practice 2017

REFERENCES

  1. 1.↵
    1. Licence A
    (2015) Living in squares, loving in triangles: lhe lives and loves of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group (Amberley Publishing, Stroud).
  2. 2.↵
    1. Davies WH
    (1911) Songs of joy and others (AC Fifield, London).
  3. 3.↵
    1. Noble A
    , ed (2003) The Canongate Burns. The complete poems and songs of Robert Burns. (Canongate, Edinburgh).
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

In this issue

British Journal of General Practice: 67 (662)
British Journal of General Practice
Vol. 67, Issue 662
September 2017
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
Download PDF
Download PowerPoint
Article Alerts
Or,
sign in or create an account with your email address
Email Article

Thank you for recommending British Journal of General Practice.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person to whom you are recommending the page knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Gordon Square Gardens: a hidden history
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from British Journal of General Practice
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from British Journal of General Practice.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Gordon Square Gardens: a hidden history
Graham Watt
British Journal of General Practice 2017; 67 (662): 413-414. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp17X692405

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero

Share
Gordon Square Gardens: a hidden history
Graham Watt
British Journal of General Practice 2017; 67 (662): 413-414. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp17X692405
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Jump to section

  • Top
  • Article
    • THE BEDFORDS
    • REFERENCES
  • Figures & Data
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF

More in this TOC Section

  • The Last King of Scotland: using film to explore our understanding of professionalism
  • Medical education and war in Ukraine
  • Where I end and you begin: additional roles in British general practice
Show more Life & Times

Related Articles

Cited By...

Intended for Healthcare Professionals

BJGP Life

BJGP Open

 

@BJGPjournal's Likes on Twitter

 
 

British Journal of General Practice

NAVIGATE

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • All Issues
  • Online First
  • Authors & reviewers

RCGP

  • BJGP for RCGP members
  • BJGP Open
  • RCGP eLearning
  • InnovAiT Journal
  • Jobs and careers

MY ACCOUNT

  • RCGP members' login
  • Subscriber login
  • Activate subscription
  • Terms and conditions

NEWS AND UPDATES

  • About BJGP
  • Alerts
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

AUTHORS & REVIEWERS

  • Submit an article
  • Writing for BJGP: research
  • Writing for BJGP: other sections
  • BJGP editorial process & policies
  • BJGP ethical guidelines
  • Peer review for BJGP

CUSTOMER SERVICES

  • Advertising
  • Contact subscription agent
  • Copyright
  • Librarian information

CONTRIBUTE

  • BJGP Life
  • eLetters
  • Feedback

CONTACT US

BJGP Journal Office
RCGP
30 Euston Square
London NW1 2FB
Tel: +44 (0)20 3188 7400
Email: journal@rcgp.org.uk

British Journal of General Practice is an editorially-independent publication of the Royal College of General Practitioners
© 2022 British Journal of General Practice

Print ISSN: 0960-1643
Online ISSN: 1478-5242