Surrey Square is a
garden square
A garden square is a type of communal garden in an urban area wholly or substantially surrounded by buildings; commonly, it continues to be applied to public and private parks formed after such a garden becomes accessible to the public at large.
...
in
Walworth
Walworth ( ) is a district of South London, England, within the London Borough of Southwark. It adjoins Camberwell to the south and Elephant and Castle to the north, and is south-east of Charing Cross.
Major streets in Walworth include the ...
in the
London Borough of Southwark
The London Borough of Southwark ( ) in South London forms part of Inner London and is connected by bridges across the River Thames to the City of London and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It was created in 1965 when three smaller council ...
. Located just off the
Old Kent Road
Old Kent Road is a major thoroughfare in South East London, England, passing through the London Borough of Southwark. It was originally part of an ancient trackway that was paved by the Romans and used by the Anglo-Saxons who named it Wæcel ...
it was laid out in the 1790s to designs by the
architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
Michael Searles
Michael Searles (1750–1813) was an English commercial architect of large houses, particularly in London. His most notable achievement is perhaps The Paragon in Blackheath.
Searles was the son of a Greenwich surveyor, also named Michael Sear ...
, who also oversaw the nearby
Paragon
Paragon may refer to:
Places
*Paragon, Indiana, a town in the United States
* Paragon, Nebraska, former community in the United States
*The Paragon, Bath, a Georgian street in the Walcot area of Bath
* The Paragon, Blackheath, London, built by Mi ...
at what is now
Bricklayers Arms
Bricklayers Arms is the road intersection of the A2 and the London Inner Ring Road where Bermondsey meets Walworth and Elephant & Castle in south London. It is the junction of Tower Bridge Road, Old Kent Road, New Kent Road and Great ...
. The square takes its name from the county of
Surrey
Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...
in which Walworth was traditionally located. When built it would have been semi-rural and designed to provide upmarket housing for the expanding population of the capital. Within two years of the first stone being laid in 1792 it was fully occupied. Amongst notable early residents was the
painter
Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...
Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer Hon.RE (Hon. Fellow of the Society of Painter-Etchers) (27 January 180524 May 1881) was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker. He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and p ...
who was born there in 1805.
[Campbell-Johnston p.8]
While northern side of the square was filled with
terraced housing
A terrace in agriculture is a flat surface that has been cut into hills or mountains to provide areas for the cultivation for crops, as a method of more effective farming. Terrace agriculture or cultivation is when these platforms are created s ...
, the other three were initially open spaces.
[British History Online]
The manor of Walworth and parish of St. Mary, Newington
Retrieved 27 January 2024. They were slowly filled with individual houses and All Saints Church. The square, already
oblong
An oblong is an object longer than it is wide, especially a non-square rectangle.
Oblong may also refer to:
Places
* Oblong, Illinois, a village in the United States
* Oblong Township, Crawford County, Illinois, United States
* A strip of land ...
-shaped came to and less and less resemble a traditional square as more buildings were added to fill up the middle section, part of which is now known as Surrey Square Park.
[ Surrey Square Primary School is located on the northern side.
]
References
Bibliography
* Baxter, Mark & Lock, Darren. ''Walworth Through Time''. Amberley Publishing Limited, 2010.
* Campbell-Johnston, Rachel. ''Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer''. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012.
* Cherry, Bridget & Pevsner, Nikolaus. ''London 4: South''. Yale University Press, 2002.
* Fairfield, Sheila. ''The Streets Of London: A Dictionary Of The Names And Their Origins''. Papermac, 1983.
Squares in the London Borough of Southwark
Streets in the London Borough of Southwark
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