Surrey Square is a

garden square A garden square is a type of communal garden in an urban area wholly or substantially surrounded by buildings; commonly, it continues to be applied to public and private parks formed after such a garden becomes accessible to the public at large. ...

Walworth Walworth () is a district of south London, England, within the London Borough of Southwark. It adjoins Camberwell to the south and Elephant and Castle to the north, and is south-east of Charing Cross. Major streets in Walworth include the Old ...

in the London Borough of Southwark. Located just off the

Old Kent Road Old Kent Road is a major thoroughfare in South East London, England, passing through the London Borough of Southwark. It was originally part of an ancient trackway that was paved by the Romans and used by the Anglo-Saxons who named it Wæceli ...

it was laid out in the 1790s to designs by the

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Michael Searles Michael Searles (1750–1813) was an English commercial architect of large houses, particularly in London. His most notable achievement is perhaps The Paragon in Blackheath. Searles was the son of a Greenwich surveyor, also named Michael Searles ...

, who also oversaw the nearby Paragon at what is now

Bricklayers Arms Bricklayers Arms is the road intersection of the A2 and the London Inner Ring Road where Bermondsey meets Walworth and Elephant & Castle in south London. It is the junction of Tower Bridge Road, Old Kent Road, New Kent Road and Great Dover St ...

. The square takes its name from the county of

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

in which Walworth was traditionally located. When built it would have been semi-rural and designed to provide upmarket housing for the expanding population of the capital. Within two years of the first stone being laid in 1792 it was fully occupied. Amongst notable early residents was the

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

Samuel Palmer who was born there in 1805.Campbell-Johnston p.8 While northern side of the square was filled with

terraced housing In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United State ...

, the other three were initially open spaces.British History Online
The manor of Walworth and parish of St. Mary, Newington
Retrieved 27 January 2024. They were slowly filled with individual houses and All Saints Church. The square, already

oblong An oblong is a non-square rectangle. Oblong may also refer to: Places * Oblong, Illinois, a village in the United States * Oblong Township, Crawford County, Illinois, United States * A strip of land on the New York-Connecticut border in the Unit ...

-shaped came to and less and less resemble a traditional square as more buildings were added to fill up the middle section, part of which is now known as Surrey Square Park. Surrey Square Primary School is located on the northern side.

References

Bibliography

* Baxter, Mark & Lock, Darren. ''Walworth Through Time''. Amberley Publishing Limited, 2010. * Campbell-Johnston, Rachel. ''Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer''. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012. * Cherry, Bridget & Pevsner, Nikolaus. ''London 4: South''. Yale University Press, 2002. * Fairfield, Sheila. ''The Streets Of London: A Dictionary Of The Names And Their Origins''. Papermac, 1983. Squares in the London Borough of Southwark Streets in the London Borough of Southwark {{London-road-stub