218 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 
