Leicester Square

Now a bustling tourist hub, the area we now know as Leicester Square was originally Lammas land, i.e. common land for the use of parishioners to dry clothes and pasture their cattle. Robert Sydney, the second Earl of Leicester therefore had to pay compensation for the loss of these rights when he acquired the ground in 1630 and built Leicester House in 1635. The original square was laid out to the south of this house and was known as Leicester Fields until the late Georgian period.

Leicester Square c. 1750

A number of fine houses were built there, with no shops being allowed at first. But when the 3^rd Earl came along towards the end of the 17^th century, he permitted booths to be erected in front of the courtyard of Leicester House. Around this time Leicester Fields was a popular place for duelling. In 1699, Richard Coote, First Earl of Bellomont, later to become the colonial governor of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York, killed a man in a duel - allegedly over the affections of a woman.

The square remained a fashionable area throughout the 18^th century and gradually became a place for public entertainments, including an ‘Eidophusikon’ in 1781, a moving panorama created using painted scenery, mirrors and special effects - now seen as an early attempt at cinema. In fact, Leicester Square was the birthplace of the panorama - particularly fitting given its continued association with cinema. 1794, for example, saw the opening of Robert Burford’s rotunda at the north-eastern corner of the square which showed magnificent landscapes and cityscapes. His giant canvases were wrapped round the walls and spectators climbed a central staircase to the top of the building for optimum views. The rotunda eventually closed in 1863.

Royal Panoptikon of Science & Art

Leicester Fields was also the haunt of artists, writers, bohemians and revolutionaries. The painter Hogarth lived at no. 30 from 1733-64 (producing his ‘Rake’s Progress’ there), while Sir Joshua Reynolds lived in a ‘superior mansion’ at no. 47 Leicester Fields from 1760 until his death in 1792.

Interior of the Panoptikon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the middle of the 19^th century, Leicester Square had begun to change in character as the construction of New Coventry Street led to an increase in the volume of traffic. Private residents moved out, making way for hotels, shops and museums. It clearly wasn’t to Charles Dickens’ taste. In Bleak House he describes the area before its transformation as: “A centre of attraction to indifferent foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, old china, gaming-houses, exhibitions and a large medley of shabbiness and drinking out of sight.”

More and more ‘entertainments’ appeared. Originally built in 1683, Savile House became a sort of Victorian multiplex, consisting of assorted exhibition rooms and entertainment areas. As well as panoramas it housed freak shows, magic shows, scientific lectures, a music-hall, a shooting gallery, Miss Linwood’s Gallery of Needlework, a billiards room and ‘poses plastiques’ – live models in flesh-coloured body stockings acting as human statues on stage. It also featured giants and giantesses, a bearded lady and a black opera featuring “real negroes

Alhambra Theatre pre-1882

direct from the cotton fields of America” (1851). The building was destroyed by fire in 1865.

In 1854, the grandly-named Royal Panoptikon of Science and Art (where the Odeon now stands) opened. Its aim was “to exhibit and illustrate, in a popular form, discoveries in science and art, to extend the knowledge of useful and ingenious inventions. To promote and illustrate the application of science to the useful arts…” But for all its noble ideals, the Panoptikon was a failure and its scientific exhibits were sold off in 1858. Two years later it reopened as a circus and from 1861 became the Alhambra, the most splendid music-hall in England. Léotard made his aerial performance debut in London at the Alhambra. By 1870, however, the venue had lost its entertainment licence after hosting the first London performance of the can-can. For the next decade it staged only plays and promenade concerts. Gutted by fire in 1882, it was rebuilt the following year retaining the old façade, using a Moorish style based on the Alhambra in Granada.

Odeon 2017

By 1936 this building too had been demolished and replaced by the present Odeon cinema with its distinctive art deco black glass. It is still Britain’s largest cinema, with capacity for 1,683 people, and hosts many film premieres. The projection room still contains some of the original 1930s décor.



Wyld's Globe

Another hugely popular attraction of the time was James Wyld’s famous ‘Great Globe’ which stood in the centre of Leicester Square gardens. It was the biggest ever constructed at 40 feet wide and 60 feet high. On the inner surface of the vast dome was a relief showing the ‘physical features of the earth’ made in plaster of Paris, each inch representing 10 miles. It was lit by gas and could be viewed from any of four stages. Visitors walked through the world in a series of galleries and could listen to lectures, see panoramas and exhibitions that changed every year. It proved an instant success, with 1.2 million people visiting in 1851 alone, including Prince Albert. But over time it attracted fewer visitors than both the Panoptikon and Burford’s panorama and was finally demolished in 1861.

With Leicester Square now a place to visit for amusement rather than the salubrious address it had been a hundred years before, and following the dismantling of Wyld’s Globe by the mid-19^th century, the gardens themselves had become dilapidated. Their salvation came in the person of Baron Albert Grant MP, who bought the gardens in the 1870s and proceeded to spend £28,000 transforming them from essentially a rubbish heap into a decent green space. He built the Shakespeare fountain and placed busts of Hogarth, Reynolds, John Hunter and Sir Isaac Newton in the four corners.

 

In the latter part of the Victorian period, Leicester Square was now world-famous for its Turkish baths, oyster rooms and, above all, its theatres. In addition to the Alhambra (see above), there was also the Hippodrome (1900) and the 

The Hippodrome

Empire. This occupied the site of old Leicester House and opened in 1884 as the Empire Theatre of Varieties.  It soon earned a notorious reputation for high-class prostitutes, who could be picked up on the second-tier promenade behind the dress circle. In 1894 the LCC ordered the promenade to be remodelled.

Empire Theatre 1900

 

In the words of the Survey of London vol. 34, “Leicester Square reached the peak of its fame as a West End centre of diversion during the quarter-century before the outbreak of war in 1914”. During its heyday, it was essentially a place for men (the neighbourhood was one of the first in London where contraception could be  bought), its popularity with the demi-monde  making it unsuitable for unescorted ladies.

Empire cinema 2007

Arguably slightly more salubrious than it was in Edwardian times, Leicester Square is still a popular hub for those seeking entertainment. A few Georgian and Victorian buildings survive but most of the square now dates from the 1920s onwards. Most recently the square was refurbished and remodelled for the 2012 London Olympics, at a cost of more than fifteen million pounds.

 

 

Refs:

The London Encyclopedia Ben Weinreb et al. (2008)

Walks in Old London Peter Jackson (1993)

Georgian London: Into the Streets Lucy Inglis (2013)
London in the Nineteenth Century Jerry White (2007)
Shepherd’s London J.F.C Phillips (1976)
Victorian London Lee Jackson & Eric Nathan (2004)