By 1720, it was a fashionable part of London: the eminent judge Sir Bernard Hale was a resident of Red Lion Square. The square was "beautified" pursuant to a 1737 Act of Parliament.[4] In the 1860s, on the other hand, it had clearly become decidedly unfashionable: the writer Anthony Trollope in his novel Orley Farm (1862) humorously reassures his readers that one of his characters is perfectly respectable, despite living in Red Lion Square. The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association's landscape gardener Fanny Wilkinson laid it out as a public garden in 1885, and, in 1894, the trustees of the square passed the freehold to the MPGA, which, in turn, passed it to the London County Council free of cost.[5]
Past residents
A notable resident of the square was John Harrison, the world-renowned inventor of the marine chronometer, who lived at number 12, where he died in 1776. There is a blue plaque dedicated to him on the corner of Summit House.
At 35 St. George's Mansions in the square, suffragette sisters Irene and Hilda Dallas had lived (and had evaded the 1911 census) in protest that women did not have a right to vote.[7]
Besant, Walter (2009), Holborn and Bloomsbury (unabridgeded.), ReadHowYouWant.com, p.26, ISBN9781458702197
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