I have an unfinished short story about a young sofa-surfer making his way across the city for a reason I have yet to settle on. In one dog-eared draft, he goes to Golden Square with the intention of paying some sort of homage to a late friend. I should have done a bit more homework, because only when visiting the square the other week to dine out with a son did I learn of its deep connection with death. Politician and historian Thomas Macauley, writing in 1685, described the location as it had lately been:
A field not to be passed without a shudder by any Londoner of that age. There, as in a place far from the haunts of men, had been dug, twenty years before, when the great plague was raging, a pit into which the dead carts had nightly shot corpses by scores.
Plague pits, or mass graves, became a feature of the city and its environs during the Great Plague of London, 1665-66, when the disease killed around 100,000 people in the space of 18 months, reducing London’s population of that time by almost a quarter.
Perhaps it underlines for how long London has been famed for its resilience that by the time Macauley penned his morbid reflection the space was already being reclaimed as a prestigious public square, perhaps by Christopher Wren. Future Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder was born there in 1708. By 1724, it was the home of the Portuguese embassy, among others. Its name is thought to be derived from Gelding Close, as the land used to be known due its being used for grazing horses.
Golden Square acquired its statue in 1753 as part of an aesthetic upgrade, which makes it odd that there appears to be at some degree doubt about who the statue is of. The prevailing view is that it’s German import George II, though some say it’s Charles II. Whichever one it is, don’t ask me why he’s dolled up like a Roman. The roses growing around him are a gift from Bulgarian Londoners, by the way.
Later, Golden Square appeared in Thomas de Quincy’s 1821 autobiographical Confessions of an English Opium Eater and provided a setting in Charles Dickens’s third novel, Nicholas Nickleby, originally published as a serial in 1838 and 1839. Located as it is in Soho, close to Brewer Street, it went on to become a hub for the advertising industry. The headquarters of Clear Channel and M&C Saatchi are there today.
The restaurant, which you can see in the bottom right hand corner of my photo, was a bit of a disappointment, but I find restaurants often are. And I enjoyed the company – and the chance to spend a bit of time thinking about the bleak, odd and glitzy story of Golden Square.
Follow John Vane on Twitter. Buy his London novel, Frightgeist: A Tall Tale of Fearful Times, either directly from On London or from Pages of Hackney. It’s a political satire about populism, anxiety and London. You will love it.