Hanover Square, Westminster facts for kids

Hanover Square from Stow's London Squares (1750), looking north across Marylebone, which was only partly built up at that date.

Hanover Square is a square in Mayfair, Westminster, situated to the south west of Oxford Circus, the major junction where Oxford Street meets Regent Street.

The streets which converge at Hanover Square are (in alphabetical order): Brook Street, Dering Street, Hanover Street, Harewood Place and Princes Street.

Hanover Square was developed from 1713 as a fashionable residential address by Richard Lumley, 1st Earl of Scarbrough, a soldier and statesman best known for his role in the Glorious Revolution. Like Scarbrough, most of the early residents were staunch supporters of the Hanoverian succession of 1714. "Early Hanover Square was decidedly Whig and most decidedly military", commented the architectural historian Sir John Summerson. Early residents included Generals Earl Cadogan, Sir Charles Wills, Stewart, Evans, Lord Carpenter and John Pepper, "names conspicuously associated with episodes in Marlborough’s war and the 'Fifteen'."

While a few of the 18th-century houses remain largely intact, most of the square has been reconstructed in a variety of periods. It is now almost entirely occupied by offices, including the London office of Vogue, the UK headquarters of the telecoms and data consultancy Expect Solutions, MVA Consultancy, the global headquarters of property consultancy SMART4 (www.smart-4.co.uk) and the UK headquarters of the head-hunting company Odgers Berndtson.

The parish church of St George's, Hanover Square, is a short distance to the south of the square at the junction of St George Street and Maddox Street, built on land given by William Steuart. In 1759 James Abercrombie, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War, resided in St George Street.

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  Statue of William Pitt the Younger at the south side of Hanover Square.

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  View to the northeast in Hanover Square.

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  View to the northwest.

Bibliography

• Sir John Summerson, Georgian London, London: Penguin, 1969 (revised edition)
• Edward Walford, Hanover Square and neighbourhood, Old and New London: Volume 4 (1878), pp. 314–326.

Notable residents

Booth's Poverty Map, 1889, identifies gold (top) income for Hanover Square and wealthy incomes surrounding; it finds nearest true poverty, then, in Soho a few blocks east; and the height of ground is given in feet.

This was among the prestigious streets of the socialite elite of the capital in the 19th century, and increasingly national institutions and corporate headquarters. These included:

• The Hall Woodhouse family, prominent surgeons from the 1870s to 1910s - as to №1
• John Wallop, 3rd Earl of Portsmouth and family in 1823 - as to №2
• Royal Agricultural Society in the 1880s - as to №12
• Ibbs & Tillett event promotion - as to №19
• Rt Rev John Egerton, d.1787, Bishop of Durham and his wife, daughter of local magnate the Earl of Portland- as to №23