West Square

Coordinates: 51°29′43″N 0°6′20″W / 51.49528°N 0.10556°W / 51.49528; -0.10556

West Square is a historic square in south London, England, just south from St George's Road. The square is within the London Borough of Southwark, but as it is located in postcode SE11, it is commonly said to be in Lambeth.

Immediately to the west is the Imperial War Museum (formerly the Bethlem Royal Hospital). To the south is the Imperial War Museum Annex (which used to be an orphans' home) in Austral Street.

The terraced houses in the square surround a communal garden that is open to the public during the day but locked at night. The square forms part of a larger conservation area.

West Square has the following entry in Volume XXV of the Survey of London, published in 1955 by the then London County Council.

“The largest of the several plots of ground in St George's Fields which belonged in the mid-18th century to Henry Bartelote and then to the West family was the close lying south of St George's Road, between Moulton's Close (the Imperial War Museum) and the ground belonging to Hayle's estate.— Colonel Temple West died in 1784, leaving his freehold estate in St George's Fields to his wife Jane during her life, and after her death, to his eldest son, Temple, in tail male. They were empowered to make leases of up to 99 years, and in 1791 they granted building leases of the side of West Square to Thomas Kendall and James Hedger [see below]. Most of the houses on the north, east and west sides of the square were completed and occupied by 1794, and the majority still remain; they are nearly all three-storied. Nos, 25-28 on the south side, built a few years later, are a storey higher. These have rectangular patterned door fanlights. The houses on the west side of the square are grouped formally; the two centre houses, which are surmounted by a pediment, and those adjoining them on either side, are set forward slightly as are the two houses at each end of the terrace. The open space in the centre of the square is now maintained by Southwark Borough Council.

...
Wikipedia