Holborn: Red Lion Square

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W. J. Loftie, adding to the incomplete work of Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of Holborn with this look at Red Lion Square:

Red Lion Square took its name from a very well-known tavern in Holborn, one of the largest and most notable of the old inns.

There is a modern successor, a Red Lion public-house, at the corner of Red Lion Street.

To the ancient inn the bodies of the regicides were brought the night before they were dragged on hurdles to be exposed at Tyburn.

This gave rise to a tradition, which still haunts the spot, that some of these men, including Cromwell, were buried in the Square, and that dummy bodies were substituted to undergo the ignominy at Tyburn.

There was for many years in the centre of the Square an obelisk with the inscription, "Obtusum Obtusioris Ingenii Monumentum Quid me respicis viator? Vade."

And an attempt has been made to read the mysterious inscription as a Cromwellian epitaph.

Pennant says that in his time the obelisk had recently vanished, which gives the date of destruction about 1780.

The Square was built about 1698, and is curiously laid out, with streets running diagonally from the corners as well as rectangularly from the sides.

It had formerly a watch-house at each corner, as well as the obelisk in the centre.

It is at present (1903) lined by brick houses of uniform aspect and unequal heights, with here and there a conspicuously modern building.

The centre is laid out as a public garden, and forms a green and pleasant oasis in a very poor district.

Next: Holborn: Red Lion Square: William Morris