A green place for parents, children and queens
Who is the queen of Queen Square? The statue cast from lead in the gardens at its centre was long thought to represent Queen Anne (reigned 1702–14). The square, laid out in 1716, was named after Anne, but the figure probably represents Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744–1818), King George III’s queen. Her interest in botany is commemorated in the name of an exotic bloom, the strelitzia. Although Charlotte and George did not meet each other until their wedding day, they had a happy marriage. She bore 15 children and he, in a radical break with royal tradition, never took a mistress. The physician who treated George III in his later years of mental illness lived on Queen Square. It was decided that the King should live in his doctor’s house for a time, and Charlotte is said to have rented the cellar of the house at no. 1 as a store for her husband’s favourite food. Today, this building is a pub called The Queen’s Larder.
Whether Anne or Charlotte, the statue is magnificent. It depicts a person of dainty stature with a resolute expression and curly, shoulder-length hair, wearing a crown and an opulent dress with a plunging neckline, a floral pattern and tassels suspended from the girdle. Her outstretched right hand once held a sceptre. One more queen is honoured on the square. In 1977, for the silver jubilee of Elizabeth II, a basin of flowers was placed at the other end of the gardens. Slabs on the ground in front and behind bear verses by Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes.
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Address Bloomsbury, west of Russell Square, WC1N 3AQ | Public Transport Russell Square (Piccadilly Line) | Hours Garden 7.30am until dusk| Tip The café in the Mary Ward Centre at the south end of Queen Square serves reasonably priced vegetarian dishes.
A more recent work of art on Queen Square shows a mother with baby in the middle of the gardens, which have been open to the public since 1999. They are much visited by young patients and their parents from the nearby children’s hospital in Great Ormond Street. The square with its rose beds and flowering shrubs gives them a quiet place to sit when times are difficult.
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