234 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
dation, was for long current that a rough stone obelisk, 
which stood afterwards in the Square, marked the spot 
where Cromwell’s body was buried by friends who rescued 
the remains from the scaffold. The houses were built 
round it at the end of the seventeenth century, but the 
space in the middle seems, like all other squares at this 
time, to have been more or less a rubbish heap, and a 
resort of “ vagabonds and other disorderly persons.” In 
1737 the inhabitants got an Act of Parliament to allow 
them to levy a rate to keep the Square in order. A 
contemporary, in praising this determination to beautify 
the Square, “ which had run much to decay,” hopes that 
“Leicester Fields and Golden Square will soon follow these 
good examples.” The “beautifying” consisted in setting 
up a railing round it, with watch-houses at the corners, 
while the obelisk rose in the centre out of the rank grass. 
The present garden, when first opened to the public, 
was managed by the Metropolitan Gardens Association, 
but since 1895 the London County Council have looked 
after it; the inhabitants having made a practically free 
gift of it for the public benefit. The nice old trees, 
flowers, seats, and fountain make it a much less gloomy 
spot than during any time of its history since the Red 
Lion kept solitary watch in the fields. 
The largest of all the squares is Lincoln’s Inn Fields. 
The garden, which is 7J acres in extent, was, after 
many lengthy negotiations, finally opened to the public 
in 1895. The fine old houses which survive, show the 
importance and size of Inigo Jones’s original conception. 
It has been said that the Square is exactly the same size 
as the base of the Great Pyramid, but this is not the case. 
The west side, which was completed by Inigo Jones, was 
begun in 1618, but the centre of the Square was left an 
