Designed as a companion park to the nearby Gordon Square, Tavistock Square is a compact green space in Bloomsbury, central London.
Tavistock Square was built shortly after 1806 by the property developer James Burton and the master builder Thomas Cubitt for Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford, and formed part of the Bedford Estate in London, owned by the Dukes of Bedford.
The square takes its name from Marquess of Tavistock, a courtesy title given to the eldest sons of the Dukes of Bedford.
Created by Hugh Court and installed in 1994, the Conscientious Objectors Commemorative Stone commemorates “men and women conscientious objectors all over the world and in every age.”
Planted in 1967, this cherry tree memorialises the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The centrepiece of the park is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, sculpted by Fredda Brilliant and installed in 1968.
The pedestal contains a space for people to leave floral tributes to the peace campaigner.
A carpet of autumn leaves.
A crow rests on the memorial to the surgeon Dame Louisa Aldrich-Blake (1865 –1925).
A bust of the writer Virginia Woolf, cast from a 1931 sculpture by Stephen Tomlin (1901–1937), was unveiled in 2004 in the southwest corner of the square.
Woolf lived at 52 Tavistock Square between 1924 and 1939.
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Central London photos – parks, buildings, street scenes and London life (100 posts)
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