Eaton Square

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Coordinates: 51°29′46″N 0°9′6″W / 51.49611°N 0.15167°W / 51.49611; -0.15167

Terrace to the North Side of Eaton Square.

Eaton Square is a residential garden square in London's Belgravia district. It is one of the three garden squares built by the Grosvenor family when they developed the main part of Belgravia in the 19th century, and is named after Eaton Hall, the Grosvenor country house in Cheshire. Eaton Square is larger but less grand than the central feature of the district, Belgrave Square, and both larger and grander than Chester Square. The first block was laid out by Thomas Cubitt from 1827.

Overview

The houses in Eaton Square are large, predominantly three bay wide buildings, joined in regular terraces in a classical style, with four or five main storeys, plus attic and basement and a mews house behind. The square is one of London's largest and is divided into six compartments by the upper end of Kings Road (northeast of Sloane Square), a main road, now busy with traffic, that occupies its long axis, and two smaller cross streets. Most of the houses are faced with white stucco, but some are faced with brick.

Before World War II Eaton Square was a securely upper class address, but not of the grandeur of London's very grandest addresses in Mayfair and Belgravia: Belgrave Square, Grosvenor Square, St James's Square or Park Lane.

Between 1940 and 1944, the Belgian government in exile was located in Eaton Square.

However, after World War II, when those places were converted to mainly commercial and institutional use, Eaton Square remained almost wholly residential and rose to the front rank of fashionable addresses. Some of the houses remain undivided, but much of the square has been converted into flats and maisonettes by the Grosvenor Estate. These are often lateral conversions, that is they cut across more than one of the original houses, and they usually cost several million pounds. The exterior appearance of the square remains as it was when it was built, with no intrusive modern buildings. Most but not all of the freeholds still belong to the Grosvenor Group, and the present Duke of Westminster has his own London home in the square - an illustration of the migrations of the London elite already mentioned, as up until the 1920s his predecessors lived in a detached mansion on the site of the present Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane.

St Peter's, Eaton Square,

At the east end of the square is St Peter's, a large Church of England church, in a classical style, which features a six-columned Ionic portico and a clock tower. It was designed by Henry Hakewill and built between 1824 and 1827 during the first development of Eaton Square.

Fictional references

Eaton Square is the address of Prince Amerigo and his wife, the former Maggie Verver, in the last complete major novel by Henry James, The Golden Bowl. In Angela Carter's last novel, Wise Children, Eaton Square is visited by Peregrine Hazard after returning by cab from the beach. In Anthony Trollope's novel The Bertrams Sir Henry Harcourt and his unhappy bride Lady Harcourt (Caroline Waddington) take a house in Eaton Square after their marriage. In Jeffrey Archer's First Among Equals, the Hon. Charles Gurney Seymour, future cabinet minister and son of the Earl of Bridgwater, and his wife Lady Fiona, daughter of the Duke of Falkirk, live at Eaton Square.

It was also the address of fictional radio detective Paul Temple at number 26A, while the Bellamy family of Upstairs, Downstairs lived in nearby Eaton Place.

In the series Downton Abbey the character of Lady Rosamund Painswick, sister to Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, maintains an address in Eaton Square.

Notable residents

References

  1. ↑ Open Plaques - Lord Boothby, 1 Eaton Sq
  2. ↑ Who's Who, 1980 (Adam and Charles Black, London) p. 837
  3. ↑ Open Plaques - Neville Chamberlain, 37 Eaton Sq
  4. ↑ Open Plaques - Prince Metternich, 44 Eaton Sq
  5. ↑ Open Plaques - Vivien Leigh, 54 Eaton Sq
  6. ↑ Open Plaques - George Peabody, 93 Eaton Sq
  7. ↑ http://www.parlement.com/id/vg09llxsqztv/h_m_koningin_wilhelmina_koningin
  8. ↑ Open Plaques - Edward Wood 1st Earl of Halifax, 86 Eaton Sq
  9. ↑ Open Plaques - Stanley Baldwin, 93 Eaton Sq
  10. ↑ Daily Mail - Abramovich 'gives ex-wife £1bn and four homes in world's costliest divorce'

External links

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