21 8 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



public, but by far the greater number of squares are 

 maintained by the residents in their neighbourhood, 

 who have keys to the gardens. But even though they 

 are kept outside the railings the rest of the public 

 receive a benefit from these air spaces and oxygen- 

 exhaling trees. Sometimes the public get more direct 

 advantage, as in such cases as Eaton Square, where 

 seats are placed down the centre on the pavement 

 under the shade of the trees inside the rails, and are 

 much frequented in hot weather ; or in Lower Grosvenor 

 Gardens, which are open for six weeks in the autumn, 

 when most of the residents in the houses are absent. 



Squares are dotted about nearly all over London, 

 but they can, for the most part, be grouped together. 

 There are the older ones, of different sizes, and varying 

 in their modern conditions. Among such are Lincoln's 

 Inn Fields, Charterhouse, Soho, Golden, Leicester, and 

 St. James's Squares. Then there is the large Blooms- 

 bury group, and further westward the chain of squares 

 begins with Cavendish, Manchester, Portman, on the 

 north, and Hanover and Grosvenor to the south of 

 Oxford Street. Then follow the later continuations 

 of the sequence — Bryanston, Montagu, and so on to 

 Ladbroke Square, nearly to Shepherd's Bush. To the 

 south of the Park lies the Belgravia group, with more 

 and more modern additions stretching westward till 

 they join the old village of Kensington, with dignified 

 squares of its own, or till their further multiplication 

 is checked by the River. 



To describe most of these squares would imply a 

 vast amount of vain repetition. Few have anything 

 original either in design or planting. The majority 

 have elms and planes mixed with ailanthus, while 



