Qualla: Leicester Square

Leicester Square: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cristian Bortes from Cluj-Napoca, Romania, CC BY 2.0. Premiere nights at Leicester Square pull in two crowds at once. The first arrives in black cars at the kerb, slips out into chairs of camera flashes and red carpet, and disappears through the brass doors of the Odeon. The second crowd is held back behind crash barriers along Charing Cross Road - thousands of people standing four-deep on a Wednesday night to see whichever Marvel or Bond cast has flown in. They get an hour or two of mingling, the carpet, and then the lobby doors close. The black cars drive on to dinner. The barriers come down. The square belongs to the tourists again. This is the only place in Britain where this happens with any regularity, and it has been happening here in some form since 1884.

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Image: Cristian Bortes from Cluj-Napoca, Romania | CC BY 2.0

Leicester Square: Leicester Fields

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0. The land belonged to Westminster Abbey until 1536, when Henry VIII added it to his portfolio of seized monastic property. In 1630, Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester, bought the estate and began building himself a vast brick house at the northern end. When he fenced off the fie...

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Image: Bernard Gagnon | CC BY-SA 3.0

Leicester Square: Hogarth, Reynolds, and a Hoax

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fernweh, CC BY-SA 2.0. If you walked around the square in 1726, you would have passed a house at number 27 where a woman from Surrey named Mary Toft was being attended by an anatomist named Nathaniel St Andre. St Andre had announced to King George I that Toft was giving birth to rabbits - and not just ...

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Image: Fernweh | CC BY-SA 2.0

Leicester Square: Alhambras and Empires

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turquoisefish, CC BY 3.0. By the 1850s the square had gone downmarket. New Coventry Street brought traffic through, the gentry moved out to Mayfair, and the houses became shops, museums, and exhibition halls. Wyld's Great Globe was erected in the centre of the park for the Great Exhibition of 1851 - a vas...

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Image: Turquoisefish | CC BY 3.0

Leicester Square: Fester Square

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0. In January 1979, during the Winter of Discontent, the refuse collectors went on strike. Within a fortnight Leicester Square was a knee-deep dump of black bin liners, kebab cartons, and theatre programmes. Newspapers started calling it Fester Square. It became the most-photographe...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 4.0

Leicester Square: Mr Bean and the Iron Throne

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. Today Leicester Square has eight permanent bronze statues of fictional film characters scattered around its edges as part of the Scenes in the Square trail, installed in 2020. Mary Poppins floats on the corner of Cranbourn Street with her umbrella raised. Mr Bean sits checking hi...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0