- There is also Golden Square, Victoria
Golden Square is a suburb of Bendigo in Victoria, Australia.-Today:Golden Square is home to The Bulldogs Football and Netball Team competing in the Bendigo Football League. , Golden Square Secondary College, Golden Square Primary School, Maple St...
in Australia, and Golden Square Shopping Centre in WarringtonWarrington is a large town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. The population of the borough of Warrington, including its 18 civil parishes, is around 194,000...
, Cheshire
Golden Square,
SohoSoho is an area in the centre of the West End of London, England, in the City of Westminster. It is an entertainment district which for much of the later part of the 20th century had a reputation for its sex shops as well as its night life and film industry...
,
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
in the
City of WestminsterThe City of Westminster is a borough of London with city status. It is located west of the City of London and north of the River Thames, and forms part of Inner London and the bulk of London's central area....
is one of the great historic squares of
Central LondonThe term Central London refers to the districts of London which are considered closest to the centre. There is no conventional definition, nor any official one, for the entire area that can be called "central London". Central London covers about 10 square miles on areas both north and south of the...
. The square is just east of
Regent StreetRegent Street is one of the major shopping streets in London's West End, well known to tourists and Londoners alike, and famous for its Christmas illuminations...
and north of
Piccadilly CircusPiccadilly Circus is a famous road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster,built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the major shopping street of Piccadilly...
.
Probably laid down according to plans by Sir
Christopher WrenSir Christopher Wren was one of the best known and highest acclaimed English architects in history,...
, this west London square was brought into being from the 1670s onwards. It very rapidly became the political and ambassadorial district of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, housing the Portuguese embassy among others.
The town house of the first
Viscount BolingbrokeHenry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke , was an English politician and philosopher. He identified predominantly with the Tory faction, of which he was a prominent member for many years....
, much favoured by
Queen AnneAnne became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702, succeeding her brother-in-law, William III of England and II of Scotland...
, was situated on the square.
Discussion
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- There is also Golden Square, Victoria
Golden Square is a suburb of Bendigo in Victoria, Australia.-Today:Golden Square is home to The Bulldogs Football and Netball Team competing in the Bendigo Football League. , Golden Square Secondary College, Golden Square Primary School, Maple St...
in Australia, and Golden Square Shopping Centre in WarringtonWarrington is a large town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. The population of the borough of Warrington, including its 18 civil parishes, is around 194,000...
, Cheshire
Golden Square,
SohoSoho is an area in the centre of the West End of London, England, in the City of Westminster. It is an entertainment district which for much of the later part of the 20th century had a reputation for its sex shops as well as its night life and film industry...
,
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
in the
City of WestminsterThe City of Westminster is a borough of London with city status. It is located west of the City of London and north of the River Thames, and forms part of Inner London and the bulk of London's central area....
is one of the great historic squares of
Central LondonThe term Central London refers to the districts of London which are considered closest to the centre. There is no conventional definition, nor any official one, for the entire area that can be called "central London". Central London covers about 10 square miles on areas both north and south of the...
. The square is just east of
Regent StreetRegent Street is one of the major shopping streets in London's West End, well known to tourists and Londoners alike, and famous for its Christmas illuminations...
and north of
Piccadilly CircusPiccadilly Circus is a famous road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster,built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the major shopping street of Piccadilly...
.
Probably laid down according to plans by Sir
Christopher WrenSir Christopher Wren was one of the best known and highest acclaimed English architects in history,...
, this west London square was brought into being from the 1670s onwards. It very rapidly became the political and ambassadorial district of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, housing the Portuguese embassy among others.
The town house of the first
Viscount BolingbrokeHenry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke , was an English politician and philosopher. He identified predominantly with the Tory faction, of which he was a prominent member for many years....
, much favoured by
Queen AnneAnne became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702, succeeding her brother-in-law, William III of England and II of Scotland...
, was situated on the square. The statue of George II is believed to have come from
Cannons HouseCannons was a stately home in Edgware, Middlesex built for James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos between 1713 and 1724 at a cost of £200,000 but which in 1747 was razed to the ground and its contents dispersed....
.
The square features, albeit in a fictional context, in the third part of
Neal StephensonNeal Town Stephenson is an American writer, known for his speculative fiction works, which have been variously categorized science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. He has also written under the pseudonym of Stephen Bury.Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics,...
's Baroque Cycle,
The System of the WorldThe System of the World, a novel by Neal Stephenson, is the third and final volume in The Baroque Cycle.The title alludes to the third volume of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which bears the same name....
. An important scene in
A Handful of DustA Handful of Dust is a novel by Evelyn Waugh published in 1934. It is included in Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels, and Time Magazine's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.. The title is an allusion to T. S...
, by
Evelyn WaughArthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer, best known for such darkly humorous and satirical novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust, and The Loved One, as well as for serious works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy that clearly...
, takes place in a nightclub in the fictional Sink Street, off Golden Square.
Golden Square also features in
Charles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens FRSA , pen-name "Boz", was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era and one of the most popular of all time. He created some of literature's most memorable characters. His novels and short stories have never gone out of print...
'
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas NicklebyNicholas Nickleby; or, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a comic novel by Charles Dickens. Originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839, it was Dickens' third novel....
, as the square where Ralph Nickleby lives in a spacious house and has his "establishment". Dickens describes the square thus
Although a few members of the graver professions live about Golden Square, it is not exactly in anybody's way to or from anywhere. It is one of the squares that have been; a quarter of the town that has gone down in the world, and taken to letting lodgings. Many of its first and second floors are let, furnished, to single gentlemen; and it takes boarders besides. It is a great resort of foreigners. The dark-complexioned men who wear large rings, and heavy watch-guards, and bushy whiskers, and who congregate under the Opera Colonnade, and about the box-office in the season, between four and five in the afternoon, when they give away the orders,--all live in Golden Square, or within a street of it. Two or three violins and a wind instrument from the Opera band reside within its precincts. Its boarding-houses are musical, and the notes of pianos and harps float in the evening time round the head of the mournful statue, the guardian genius of a little wilderness of shrubs, in the centre of the square. On a summer's night, windows are thrown open, and groups of swarthy moustached men are seen by the passer-by, lounging at the casements, and smoking fearfully. Sounds of gruff voices practising vocal music invade the evening's silence; and the fumes of choice tobacco scent the air. There, snuff and cigars, and German pipes and flutes, and violins and violoncellos, divide the supremacy between them. It is the region of song and smoke. Street bands are on their mettle in Golden Square; and itinerant glee- singers quaver involuntarily as they raise their voices within its boundaries.
Current residents
Absolute Radio is based at No. 1 Golden Square and the square is also the home to the London office of
M & C Saatchi GroupM&C Saatchi is an advertising agency formed in January 1995 by brothers Maurice Saatchi and Charles Saatchi after they were ousted from their own advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi....
and its subsidiary companies including M&C Saatchi, M&C Saatchi Export, LIDA, TALK PR, Play*, Studio 36 and 5th Element.