Park of the week

207. Charterhouse Square

This is a five-sided garden square in Islington, close to the Barbican. In 1348 it was the site of a burial ground for victims of the Black Death, the largest mass grave in London. 

A few decades after the burials stopped, a large Carthusian monastery was built on the northern side of the plague pit, and the area gained its name from the common name of the monasteries, La Grande Chartreuse, which is anglicised as Charterhouse. The monastery was closed as part of Henry VIII’s dissolution, and after being sold for use as a mansion house, was given to a school and almshouses. 

On the eastern side of the square, the above art deco block of flats, Florin Court, was built in 1936 on the site of a manor house originally owned by the Marquess of Dorchester and is one of the earliest purpose-built blocks of residential flats in the area. Florin Court was used as the fictional residence of Hercule Poirot, Whitehaven Mansions, in the TV series Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

The square to have been open until around 1715, when the residents agreed to enclose it with a wooden fence and gates. In 1742, they secured an Act of Parliament for a much larger enclosure work to take place, and a board of trustees set up to look after the square.

The preamble to the 1742 Act recorded that the wooden fencing that used to enclose Charterhouse Square had fallen into decay and that the Square was liable to be frequented by “common Beggars, Vagabonds, and other disorderly Persons, for the Exercise of their idle Diversions, and other unwarrantable Purposes, so as to be unfit for the Habitation of Persons of Character and Condition”. 

There are several gates into the park, three of them flanked by gas lamps, although some of those were repositioned in 2016 when the park was refurbished after it was used by the Crossrail project to dig a shaft down to the railway tunnels that now run deep under the park. It was the Crossrail excavations that uncovered the plague pit.

There are benches, with ironwork in the shape of snakes, and a crest on the front with the coat of arms of the Carthusian order.

A covered pavilion was added to one corner of the park in 2016, with a gas lantern above a wooden block highlighting the history of the square and the monastery. 

Judith Field

Charterhouse Square, London EC1M 6EA