PLACE NAME
Also known as Argyll Square, it was planned in 1832, following the collapse of the ambitious Panarmion project, which the Survey of London says had been planned as a large entertainment complex with a theatre, galleries, reading rooms, gardens, pleasure grounds, and an overhead monorail, no less. The Times advertised a sale on Tuesday 28 February 1832 of “A very large quantity of Stock and Place Bricks, Stone, Flint, and miscellaneous Property…forming the enclosure of the [Panarmion] gardens…The whole to be taken away at the expense of the purchasers immediately after the sale, in order to form a square, to be called Argyll-square.” It was finished by 1849, and housing had started to appear from the 1840s. It has been suggested the square was named after the Dukes of Argyll, however bearing in mind the names of a number of local streets, it seems that Gillian Bebbington’s suggestion in London Street Names is more likely: “names were chosen from the north of Britain; Argyle, or Argyll in Scotland; Belgrove Street, formerly Belgrave Street (Warwickshire); Crestfield Street, formerly Chesterfield Street (Derbyshire); and Birkenhead Street (Cheshire). There were also once Manchester, Liverpool and Derby Streets here.” Prior to development, this land had been part of the Battle Bridge Estate, an area of field east and west of Gray’s Inn Road.
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