Lowndes Square

Lowndes Square is a residential garden square at the north-west end of Belgravia, London, SW1. It is formed of archetypal grand terraces of light stucco houses, cream or white. The length of the central rectangular garden is parallel with Sloane Street to the west; visible from the north-west corner is a corner of the Harvey Nichols store, beyond which is Knightsbridge tube station. Ecclesiastically (that is, in the Anglican church), it remains in a northern projection of one of the parishes of Chelsea,[1] save its east side, in the very small parish of St Paul, Knightsbridge,[2] a division which is mirrored secularly by the boundaries of two London Boroughs (Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea).

Lowndes Street where it enters Lowndes Square (trees to the right)

Ownership and building design

The square has the highest percentage of highly anonymous (shell company) ownership in the UK, accounting for 40% of the houses.[3]

Its houses are valued in excess of £10 million and so are mainly internally converted into apartments, some of which are multi-level. Locally listed building status for most of the buildings means the façades and exterior structure above ground must remain little changed. No.s 11 and 12 have higher, main statutory-level protection.[4]

As with Belgrave Square, George Basevi designed most of the houses. Lowndes Court, a classical apartment block, takes up the south side bar No. 34 (former numbers 28–33); the north side (former numbers of 50 and possibly more) is the Park Tower (Hotel) which fronts Knightsbridge, an arterial road on the other side.

The Pakistan High Commission takes up an interior conversion of No.s 35–36.

Context and central garden

On the other side of Sloane Street are Wilton Crescent and Belgrave Square, notable garden squares of London which are also showcases Basevi's designs.

The private communal garden is 0.4009 hectares (0.991 acres) and contains plane trees and shrubs.[5]

In film, fiction and the media

This was a setting in the Edward Frederic Benson novel The Countess of Lowndes Square.

In Alan Hollinghurst's novel The Line of Beauty, the Ouradi family live on the square.

Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's 1970 film Performance, starring Mick Jagger and James Fox, used interiors of Leonard Plugge's Lowndes Square house.

Notable residents

References
  1. "A Church Near You".
  2. "A Church Near You".
  3. Blindboy Undestroys the World - The Broken Housing System, retrieved 17 December 2019
  4. Historic England. "11 & 12 (1237791)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
  5. "Lowndes Square". London Gardens Online. Archived from the original on 3 April 2016. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  6. Morgan, Henry James, ed. (1903). Types of Canadian Women and of Women who are or have been Connected with Canada. Toronto: Williams Briggs. p. 142.

51°30′01″N 0°09′31″W

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