Red Lion Square is a small square

Town square

A town square is an open public space commonly found in the heart of a traditional town used for community gatherings. Other names for town square are civic center, city square, urban square, market square, public square, and town green.Most town squares are hardscapes suitable for open markets,...

 on the boundary of Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury

-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...

 and Holborn

Holborn

Holborn is an area of Central London. Holborn is also the name of the area's principal east-west street, running as High Holborn from St Giles's High Street to Gray's Inn Road and then on to Holborn Viaduct...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. The square was laid out in 1698 by Nicholas Barbon

Nicholas Barbon

Nicholas If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebon who traded as Nicholas Barbon was an English economist, physician and financial speculator. He is counted among the critics of mercantilism and was one of the first proponents of the free market...

, taking its name from the Red Lion Inn. According to some sources the bodies of three regicides - Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....

, John Bradshaw

John Bradshaw (judge)

John Bradshaw was an English judge. He is most notable for his role as President of the High Court of Justice for the trial of King Charles I and as the first Lord President of the Council of State of the English Commonwealth....

 and Henry Ireton

Henry Ireton

Henry Ireton was an English general in the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War. He was the son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell.-Early life:...

 - were placed in a pit on the site of the Square.

The centre-piece of the garden today is a statue by Ian Walters

Ian Walters

Ian Homer Walters was an English sculptor.Born in Solihull, Walters was educated at Yardley Grammar school and under William Bloye at the Birmingham School of Art...

 of Fenner Brockway

Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway

Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway , was a British anti-war activist and politician.-Biography:Archibald Fenner Brockway was born in Calcutta, India, which was at that time under British Imperial rule...

, which was installed in 1986. There is also a memorial bust of Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

. Conway Hall

South Place Ethical Society

The South Place Ethical Society, based in London at Conway Hall, is thought to be the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world, and is the only remaining Ethical society in the United Kingdom...

 opens on to the Square. On 15 June 1974 a meeting by the National Front

British National Front

The National Front is a far right, white-only political party whose major political activities took place during the 1970s and 1980s. Its popularity peaked in the 1979 general election, when it received 191,719 votes ....

 in Conway Hall resulted in a protest by anti-fascist groups. The following disorder

Red Lion Square disorders

The Red Lion Square disorders were an event in 1974.On 15 June that year, the National Front marched through London's West End; their march was to finish with a meeting in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. The London Area Council for Liberation conducted a counter demonstration which consisted of a...

 and police action left one student - Kevin Gately

Kevin Gately

Kevin Gately was a second year student of mathematics at the University of Warwick who died as a result of injuries received in the Red Lion Square disorders in London on 15 June 1974...

 from the University of Warwick

University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

 - dead.

The square today is home to the Royal College of Anaesthetists

Royal College of Anaesthetists

The Royal College of Anaesthetists is "the professional body responsible for the specialty of anaesthesia throughout the United Kingdom". It sets standards in anaesthesia, critical care, pain management, and for the training of anaesthetists, physician assistants - and practising critical care...

 and the College of Emergency Medicine

College of Emergency Medicine

The College of Emergency Medicine is an organization of emergency physicians in the United Kingdom which sets standards of training and administers examinations for emergency physicians in the United Kingdom and Ireland.-Entrance criteria:...

. Lamb's Conduit Street

Lamb's Conduit Street

Lamb's Conduit Street is street in central London, located in Bloomsbury on the west end of the city. There are many independent traders along the street. The street was named after William Lambe in recognition of the £1,500 he gave for the rebuilding of the Holborn Conduit in 1564.-External links:*...

 is nearby and the nearest underground station is Holborn

Holborn tube station

Holborn is a station of the London Underground in Holborn in London, located at the junction of High Holborn and Kingsway. Situated on the Piccadilly Line and on the Central Line , it is the only station common to the two lines, although the two lines cross each other three times elsewhere...

.

The first headquarters of the Marshall, Faulkner & Co, which was founded by William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

, was at 8 Red Lion Square.

Red Lyon

Red Lion Square in the Last Century—The Old "Red Lyon" Inn—A Quack Doctor's "Puff"—The Fate of the Regicides: Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw—An "Old Lady of Quality"—Lord Raymond, Jonas Hanway, and Sharon Turner, Residents in this Square—An Antiquated Law Court—London Infirmary for Diseases of the Legs—A Batch of Charitable and Provident Institutions—Milton a Resident in this Neighbourhood—Eagle Street—Martin Van Butchell, the Eccentric Quack Doctor—Fisher and Kingsgate Streets—A Royal Misadventure—Messrs. Day and Martin's Blacking Manufactory—The Holborn Amphitheatre—Red Lion Street—Theobald's Road—Lamb's Conduit Street—Lamb's Conduit rebuilt—Its Removal—Lamb's Conduit Fields—Harpur Street—Milman Street—The Chevalier D'Eon—Doughty Street—Charles Dickens a Resident here—John Street Baptist Chapel—St. John's Episcopal Chapel the Head-quarters of Fashionable Evangelicalism—The Gray's Inn Cock-pit—Bedford Row—The Entomological Society—Bedford Street—Featherstone Buildings—Hand Court—Brownlow Street—The Duke's Theatre—Warwick Court.

To the south-east of Bloomsbury Square, surrounded by a nest of narrow alleys between it and Holborn, is Red Lion Square, described by Northouck as a "neat, small square, much longer than it is broad," and having "convenient" streets entering it on three sides, with foot-passages at the corners. It had at that time (1786) not only in the centre a plain obelisk, but a stone watch-house at each corner, all of which have long been swept away. Although respectable, the square has a very dull appearance, which is thus whimsically portrayed by the author of "Critical Observations on the Buildings, &c, of London," published about the middle of the last century:—"I never go into it without thinking of my latter end. The rough sod that 'heaves with many a mouldering heap,' the dreary length of its sides, with the four watchhouses like so many family vaults at the corners, and the naked obelisk that springs from amid the rank grass, like the sad monument of a disconsolate widow for the loss of her first husband, all form together a memento mori, more powerful to me than a death's head and cross marrow-bones; and were but a parson's bull to be seen bellowing at the gate, the idea of a country churchyard, in my mind, would be complete."

Hatton, in 1708, describes it as "a pleasant square of good buildings, between High Holborn south and the fields north;" and Pennant, writing in 1790, says that in the centre was "a clumsy obelisk, lately vanished."

The "Red Lyon" Inn was in olden times the most important hostelry in Holborn, and accordingly had the honour of giving its name to Red Lion Street and to the adjoining square. If we may draw an inference from the entries in the register of St. Andrew's, Holborn, the inn had behind it a fine row of trees, for we find notices of foundlings being exposed under the "Red Lion Elmes in Holborn." The "Red Lyon" is mentioned in the following "puff" of a quack doctor, at the beginning of the last century:—"Cornelius Tilbury, sworn Chirurgeon in ordinary to K. Charles II., to his late Sovereign K. William, as also to her present Majesty Queen Anne," gives his address as "at the Blue Flower Pot, in Great Lincoln's Inn Fields, at Holbourn Row (where you see at night a light over the door). …And for the convenience of those that desire privacy, they may come through the Red Lyon Inn, in Holbourn, between the two Turnstiles, which is directly against my back door, where you will see the sign of the Blue Ball hang over the door. I dispose of my famous Orvietan, either liquid or in powder, what quantity or price you please. … This is that Orvietan that expelled that vast quantity of poyson I took before K. Charles II., for which his Majesty presented me with a gold medal and chain."

The story that some of the regicides were buried in Red Lion Square has been extensively believed; it is told by Mr. Peter Cunningham, with a little variety, as follows:—"The bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were carried from Westminster Abbey to the Red Lion Inn, in Holborn, and the next day dragged on sledges thence to Tyburn." In support of this story he quotes Wood's "Athenæ Oxonienses," and the additional MSS. in the British Museum, where those who are curious in such matters will find the narrative.

On the fate of Cromwell's head we have already quoted at some length in the preceding volume. (fn. 1) It is the opinion of a writer in the Times, that if the body of Cromwell was removed from the Abbey and buried in Red Lion Square, it is not probable that another embalmed body could have been procured for the purpose of being sent as its substitute to Tyburn, as has been suggested.

CROMWELL

Pennant, as we have observed, speaks of the "clumsy obelisk" in Red Lion Square, and mentions that it was inscribed with the following lines:—"Obtusum Obtusioris Ingenii Monumentum. Quid me respicis, viator? Vade." "Could this quaint inscription," asks Mr. Jesse, in his "London," "have any hidden reference to the bones of Cromwell lying beneath it? We think not; but they are meant to mystify; and what, therefore, do they mean?" Mr. Jesse is inclined, however, in spite of his scepticism as to the inscription, to agree with those who believe in the tradition that the body of Cromwell was buried beneath this obelisk, and that upon this spot not improbably moulder, not only the bones of the great Protector, but also those of Ireton and Bradshaw, whose remains were disinterred at the same time from Westminster Abbey, and exposed on the same gallows. He strengthens this supposition by observing that the contemporary accounts of the last resting-place of these remarkable men simply inform us, that on the anniversary of the death of Charles I. their bodies were borne on sledges to Tyburn, and after hanging till sunset they were cut down and beheaded; that their bodies were then flung into a hole at the foot of the gallows, and their heads fixed upon poles on the roof of Westminster Hall. "From the word Tyburn being so distinctly laid down," Mr. Jesse adds, "it has usually been taken for granted that it was intended to designate the well-known place for executing criminals, nearly at the north end of Park Lane, or, as it was anciently styled, Tyburn Lane. However, when we read of a criminal in old times having been executed at Tyburn, we are not necessarily to presume that it was at this particular spot, the gallows having unquestionably been shifted at times from place to place, and the word Tyburn having been given indiscriminately, for the time being, to each spot. For instance, sixty years before the death of Crom well the gallows were frequently erected at the extremity of St. Giles's parish, near the end of the present Tottenham Court Road; while for nearly two centuries the Holborn end of Fetter Lane, within a short distance of Red Lion Square, was no less frequently the place of execution. Indeed, in 1643, only a few years before the exhumation and gibbeting of Cromwell, we find Nathaniel Tomkins executed at this spot for his share in Waller's plot to surprise the City. In addition, however, to these surmises is the curious fact of the bodies of Cromwell and Ireton having been brought in carts, on the night previous to their exposure on the gibbet, to the Red Lion Inn, Holborn, from which Red Lion Square derives its name, where they rested during the night. In taking this step, it is surely not unreasonable to presume that the Government had in view the selection of a house in the immediate vicinity of the scaffold, in order that the bodies might be in readiness for the disgusting exhibition of the following morning. Supposing this to have been the case, the place of their exposure and interment could scarcely have been the end of Tyburn Lane, inasmuch as the distance thither from Westminster is actually shorter than the distance from Westminster to Red Lion Square. The object of the Government could hardly have been to create a sensation by parading the bodies along a populous thoroughfare, inasmuch as the ground between St. Giles's Pound and Tyburn, a distance of a mile and a half, was at this period almost entirely open country."

This story of the disposal of Cromwell's body, if true, negatives the well-known lines of Dryden:—

"His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest."

In Rede's "Anecdotes and Biography," published just before the close of the last century, it is stated that the obelisk was thought to be a memorial erected to Cromwell by an apothecary who was attached to his principles, and had so much influence in the building of the square as to manage the marking out of the ground, thus further contriving to pay this tribute to his favourite. Curiously enough, it has been discovered that an apothecary named Ebenezer Heathcote, who had married the daughter of one of Ireton's sub-commissaries, was living at the King's-gate, Holborn, soon after the Restoration.

Leigh Hunt has left a curious reminiscence of an "old lady of quality," who lived in this square, "a quarter in different estimation from what it is now." She astounded him one day by letting her false teeth slip out, and clapping them in again. It was at her house, he adds, that his father one evening met John Wilkes. Not knowing him by sight, and happening to fall into conversation with him, while the latter sat looking down, he said something in Wilkes's disparagement, on which the jovial demagogue looked up in his face, and burst out laughing. In this square lived, in the last century, Lord Raymond, the Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. Here too, says Mr. Peter Cunningham, lived, and here, in 1786, died the benevolent Mr. Jonas Hanway, the eccentric traveller, remarkable as "the first person who ventured to walk in the streets of London with an umbrella over his head." We have already spoken at some length of this celebrity in dealing with Hanway Street. (fn. 2) The principal rooms in Hanway's house were decorated with paintings and emblematical devices, "in a style," says his biographer, "peculiar to himself. I found," he used to say, when speaking of these ornaments, "that my countrymen and women were not au fait in the art of conversation; and that instead of recurring to their cards when the discourse began to flag, the minutes between the time of assembling and the placing of the card-tables are spent in an irksome suspense. To relieve this vacuum in social intercourse, and prevent cards from engrossing the whole of my visitors' minds, I have presented them with objects the most attractive I could imagine; and when that fails there are the cards." At No. 32 in this square, the house at the corner of North Street, lived, for many years in the present century, Sharon Turner, the author of "The Sacred History of the World." He was a solicitor in practice, as well as an historian; he died here in 1847. Besides his "Sacred History," he was the author of the "History of England from the Earliest Period to the Death of Elizabeth," consisting of several works, each published separately and independently—namely, the "History of the Anglo-Saxons," "History of England in the Middle Ages," "History of the Reign of Henry VIII.," and "History of the Reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth."
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