d is very modern. It was opened in 1887, and swept over
a number of narrow courts and alleys.

For St. Martin's Lane, see p. 16.

In this is the Public Library, where some watercolours and old prints of
vanished houses are hung on the staircase. There is also the
eighteenth-century plan from Strype's Survey, well worth studying.

Leicester Square, at first known as Leicester Fields, is associated with
the Sidneys, Earls of Leicester, who had a town-house on the north side,
where the Empire Music-hall is now. This was a large brick building,
with a courtyard before it and a Dutch garden at the back. During the
reign of Charles I. and in the time of the Commonwealth the Sidneys
tenanted it, but later it was occupied by foreign Ambassadors.
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, took it in 1662, and afterwards it was
aptly described by Pennant as "the pouting-place of Princes"; for
George, son of George I., established here a rival Court when he had
quarrelled with his father, and his son Frederick, the Prince of Wales,
did precisely the same thing. During the latter tenancy a large building
adjoining, called Savile or Ailesbury House, was amalgamated with
Leicester House. George III. was living here when hailed King. Savile
House stood until the Gordon Riots, when it was completely stripped and
gutted by the rioters. The square was presented to the public in 1874 by
Baron Albert Grant, M.P. The gift is recorded on the pedestal of the
statue of Shakespeare standing in the centre.

The square was for long a favourite place for duels. A line drawn
diagonally from the north-east to the south-west corner roughly
indicates the boundary of St Martin's parish, the upper half of the
square being in St. Anne's, Soho.

The associations of this part are numerous and very interesting. The
busts of the four men standing in the corners of the centre garden have
all some local connection. They are those of Hogarth, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Hunter. Hogarth's house was on the
east, on the site of Tenison's School, and next to it was that of John
Hunter, the famous surgeon. Sir Joshua Reynolds bought No. 47 on the
west side in 1760, and lived in it until his death. Sir Isaac Newton
lived in the little street off the south side of the square, at the back
of the big new Dental Hospital. His house is still standing, and bears a
tablet of the Society of Arts. It is quite unpretentious--a
stucco-covered building with little dor