Edwardes Square *

Site on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens, for Register Entry see https://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was established in 1984 and was commonly called English Heritage. In April 2015 it split into 2 separate entities, Historic England (HE), which continues to champion and protect the historic environment, and the English Heritage Trust, whose role is to look after the 400+ historic sites and monuments owned by the state. HE manages the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) that includes over 400,000 items ranging from prehistoric monuments to office blocks, battlefields and parks, which benefit from legal protection.

Edwardes Square is a late Georgian square built in 1811-20; an Act of Parliament was passed in 1819 for the 'paving, cleansing, lighting, watching, watering, planting and improving' of the Square; with fines of £5 'to be imposed for suffering swine to wander upon said footways and carriageways'. The garden was laid out in 1820. At the main entrance on the south side of the square is a gardener's lodge in the Greek Revival Style with Tuscan portico facing the gardens, called The Temple, and where the gardener lives. The plaque on the external wall of The Temple states that it was 'partly built by a Frenchman, falsely rumoured to be an agent of Napoleon, derived its name from William Edwardes, 2nd Lord Kensington, who then owned the land which was part of the Holland House Estate'. The eponymous Frenchman who began the layout of the square was Louis Léon Changeur; a 1812 plan exists of the square by D I Bunning although it is not known if he was the designer. The other side of the entrance to The Temple are greenhouses. The fine mature trees and shrubs in the gardens include ash, lime, oak, ailanthus, catalpa, chestnut, stone pine, sycamore, lilac, laburnum, flowering cherry, robinia. The gardens have meandering paths through shrubberies, lawns, flower beds, an extensive rose pergola, croquet lawn, tennis court and children's play area, with wooded walks to the east of The Temple. Sited in the middle of one of the paths is a stone plinth surmounted by a 13 inch shell with the inscription on the plinth that it was from the Valley of Death before Sebastopol, and was presented by E Wakefield, Esq. Protected under 1851 Garden Square Act.