A pleasant stroll through Russell Square on a sunny winter’s day
If you happen to find yourself in Bloomsbury, take some time to explore its leafy squares. These are places to relax, take a breather, meet someone, have a coffee and chat, eat a sandwich at lunchtime, and generally zone out from the hubbub all around you.
Rather than try and visit all the squares – there are over a dozen of them – my suggestion is that you take in a cluster of three or four close together in the heart of the district. A good place to start is Russell Square, not least because it has its own metro station. It is one of the oldest and certainly the biggest square in Bloomsbury. Children love the fountain at its centre. There is a café, with some tables reserved for chess players. I challenge you to a game.
From there head north up Bedford Way to Tavistock Square. Each square has its own character and Tavistock Square is my favourite.
The statue of Ghandi on Tavistock Square
This is sometimes called the Peace Garden, with its many memorials dedicated to peace and tolerance. Here is a cherry tree planted in memory of the victims of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It must be a wonderful and moving sight when it blossoms in the Spring. There is a memorial stone dedicated to the bravery of conscientious objectors nearby. Mahatma Gandhi, in characteristic sitting pose, always has flowers nestled in his lap. In a corner of the garden is a bust of the writer Virginia Woolf who lived at number 52, where she ran the influential Hogarth Press with her husband, as part of the Bloomsbury set of authors who famously “lived in squares but loved in triangles”. I believe the group experimented with other geometric shapes too.
Now head west a short distance to Gordon Square, with its quaint garden kiosk café – a great place to stop for a cup of coffee.
Gordon Square, with the Kiosk Café in the background on the right
Lots of students, professors and researchers from UCL eat their sandwiches sitting on the benches. As you listen to the parakeets chattering away raucously in the treetops, you could almost imagine you are in a rainforest somewhere in Amazonia.
The main type of tree to be seen on the squares is the magnificent London plane, which somehow withstands the combination of traffic pollution, acid rain, poor soil and city grime. Sycamores and limes, horse chestnuts and beech are there too, and there is even the odd gingko and baobab. But it is the plane trees that give the squares their distinctive character. As writer Edith Nesbitt wrote:
“The chestnut’s proud and the lilac’s pretty, the poplar’s gentle and tall, but the plane tree’s kind to the poor dull city – I love him best of all!”
Talking of trees, be sure to visit Woburn Square, just over the road to the south. This is the smallest of all the squares, but here you will find nothing less than a representation of the spirit of trees, and the green force that drives them upwards and downwards at the same time. It is a sculpture of a Green Man holding a seed pod in outstretched hand.
The Green Man by Lydia Kapinski, 1999
The plaque nearby reads, in the words of Virginia Woolf:
“My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. I am green as a yew tree in the shade of the hedge. My hair is made of leaves. I am rooted to the middle of the earth”.