Qualla: Cavendish Square https://qualla.com/cavendish-square en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/cavendish-square-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Cavendish Square https://qualla.com/cavendish-square Cavendish Square: Introduction https://qualla.com/cavendish-square/ Photo credit Christine Matthews, CC BY-SA 2.0. The South Sea Bubble of 1720 ruined thousands of investors, but among its less catastrophic consequences was the stalling of a London development project. The 2nd Earl of Oxford had begun laying out a grand new square on his estate in Marylebone in 1717, naming it after his wife Henrietta Cavendish-Holles. When the Bubble burst and credit collapsed, work stopped. The square sat half-finished for years, its potential residents spooked by financial disaster. It eventually recovered and filled with nobles, doctors, and people of consequence — but the gap between ambition and completion set a pattern that the square has been repeating, in various ways, ever since.

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Image: Christine Matthews | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/cavendish-square-wp/gcpv-cavendish-square-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Cavendish Square: The Earl's Square and Its Residents https://qualla.com/cavendish-square/ Photo credit CVB, CC BY-SA 4.0. Once it was built, Cavendish Square attracted the kind of tenants a Georgian aristocrat would have wanted. Princess Amelia, daughter of George II, lived there and died in her house on the square. James Brydges, the 1st Duke of Chandos, secured a plot but never completed his plann...

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Image: CVB | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/cavendish-square-wp/gcpv-cavendish-square-the-earls-square-and-its-residents.mp3 0:06 2 full Cavendish Square: The Sculptor and the Nuns https://qualla.com/cavendish-square/ Photo credit PAUL FARMER, CC BY-SA 2.0. Numbers 11, 12, and 13 on the northern range had become a convent by the 19th century, connected by a tunnel under Dean's Mews. The Blitz damaged the buildings, and the nuns commissioned architect Louis Osman to restore them and build a bridge between the two parts. Osman approac...

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Image: PAUL FARMER | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/cavendish-square-wp/gcpv-cavendish-square-the-sculptor-and-the-nuns.mp3 0:06 3 full Cavendish Square: Statues and the Shifting of Opinion https://qualla.com/cavendish-square/ Photo credit Ordnance Survey, Public domain. The square's southern edge hosts a bronze statue of Lord George Bentinck, the 19th-century MP for King's Lynn, sculpted by Thomas Campbell and erected in 1851. A more complicated presence once stood nearby: a statue of Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, erected in 1770 to mark h...

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Image: Ordnance Survey | Public domain

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/cavendish-square-wp/gcpv-cavendish-square-statues-and-the-shifting-of-opinion.mp3 0:06 4 full Cavendish Square: What Lies Beneath https://qualla.com/cavendish-square/ Photo credit David Hawgood, CC BY-SA 2.0. Underground, Cavendish Square contains something distinctly unexpected: a 521-space car park shaped as a double helix. Vehicles descend on a continuously spiralling right-hand ramp, park on either side, and at the bottom cross diametrically to find the ascending left-hand helix. ...

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Image: David Hawgood | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/cavendish-square-wp/gcpv-cavendish-square-what-lies-beneath.mp3 0:06 5 full