Georgian London

Portrait of King George III by Allan Ramsay

With Soho and St. James' (dating from Charles II's time) was ushered in the era of squares, so characteristic a feature of the Queen Anne and Georgian period; and by the time Her late Majesty came to the throne, London was dotted over with these splendid enclosures, which had been in most cases, either pasturages, kitchen gardens, or waste land.

As an example of Queen Anne or early Georgian style, with its blending of red brick with stone dressings, its ornamental and canopied front-doors, and long narrow windows, there is, to my mind, nothing to beat Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster, unless it be Hanover Square (built shortly after Queen Anne's death) with its annex, George Street.

In both these squares, the wonderful scenic effects enable us to realize the fidelity of detail which has made Hogarth's pictures historical.

In the later Georgian period, London became the prey of many architects, who, for good or ill, left their mark all over the town.

Amongst them were the brothers Adam, who immortalized themselves by designing a well-known district off the Strand which culminates at Adelphi Terrace, a striking line of houses when viewed from the river that once laved its base.

Then with the Prince Regent and William IV, came Nash, who, if he had been given a free hand by Caesar Augustus, would, doubtless, have left Rome a city, not of marble, but of its original brick concealed by a coating of stucco.

He had a penchant for columns, of which there are several examples in Waterloo Place; and his tendency to uniformity becomes painfully evident at the beginning of Regent Street, and is apparent throughout the Regent's Park district.

He followed the taste of the day, which was for the conventional; and wherever new streets and squares were laid out, dull monotony was the result, traceable throughout Bloomsbury, and repeated by Cubitt in Belgravia and Pimlico.

Imperial London, Arthur Henry Beavan, 1901