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Cavendish Square
Cavendish Square is the central formal space of the Cavendish-Harley Estate, laid out from 1717 by Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford, whose wife Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles gave the square its name. The project was conceived on an ambitious scale, with palatial town houses intended for the aristocracy. The collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 devastated early progress, and by 1730 only two of the intended great houses had been completed.
Development resumed steadily through the Georgian period. No. 20 Cavendish Square, a plain brick-fronted three-storey town house built in 1727 to 1729, survives as one of the earliest completed buildings on the square. The square is named, in part, after William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire, reflecting the aristocratic connections the Harley family sought to cultivate. Notable early residents included Princess Amelia, daughter of George II, as well as Lord Nelson.
The square sits within the Howard de Walden Estate, which has managed this eastern portion of the historic Marylebone grid for generations. Its central garden, enclosed by Georgian and later Victorian terraces, remains a formal green space in an otherwise dense urban block. The medical character of the wider Harley Street district is less pronounced here than on the streets immediately to the north, though professional and institutional uses have long been represented around the square. Harley Street begins just a short walk to the north-west.
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