On this day in 1924, Virginia Woolf and her husband bought a house at 52 Tavistock Square, in the Bloomsbury district of London near the British Museum. Woolf had been associated with the district since 1902, when she took a house in the area with her three siblings after their father's death. She had remained in the neighborhood, becoming a central character of the "Bloomsbury Group," a set of writers and thinkers including biographer Lytton Strachey and writer E.M. Forster.
(NOTE: 52 Tavistock Square: The Bloomsbury house Woolf lived in the longest, and where she wrote most of her novels, was destroyed in WWII and replaced by part of the Tavistock Hotel. At 52 Tavistock Square, Virginia and Leonard lived on the top two floors, with a firm of solicitors on the ground two floors, and the Hogarth Press in the basement, where Virginia also had a writing room.)
Image: Bust of Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square
Contents
[hide]Public art[edit]
The centre-piece of the gardens is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, sculpted by Fredda Brilliantand installed in 1968. The maquette is in the possession of her niece and was shown on the BBC television programme Antiques Roadshow in April 2013.[1] The hollow pedestal was intended, and is used, for people to leave floral tributes to the peace campaigner and nonviolent resister to oppression in South Africa and British rule in India.[1]
A cherry tree was planted in 1967 in memory of the victims of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshimaand Nagasaki. A generation later, in 1994, a stone commemorating "men and womenconscientious objectors all over the world and in every age" was unveiled. The three features have led to the square unofficially being regarded by some as a peace park or garden, and annual ceremonies are held at each of these memorials.
The square also contains busts of the novelist Virginia Woolf (whose original family home was nearby) and the surgeon Dame Louisa Aldrich-Blake.
History[edit]
The square is now owned and administered by the London Borough of Camden, but was formerly part of an estate owned by the Dukes of Bedford, and takes its name from Tavistock, a village in Devon, also part of a Bedford estate; the name is additionally the courtesy titlegiven to the eldest sons of the Dukes of Bedford, Marquess of Tavistock. Tavistock Square was developed in the 1820s by the builder Thomas Cubitt.
Buildings[edit]
The following buildings are on Tavistock Square:
- BMA House, the headquarters of the British Medical Association (BMA), the professional association of doctors in the United Kingdom. BMA House was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and is a grade II listed building. [1]
- Woburn house, the headquarters of Universities UK, the conference of university rectors
- the Tavistock Hotel, a branch of Imperial Hotels.[2]
- Connaught Hall, a University of London hall of residence, which houses 215 students, and is a grade II listed building.
- Institute for the Study of the Americas, part of the University of London's School of Advanced Study
- School of Public Policy of University College London.
- London office of Churches Together in England
- Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan, United Kingdom office
- Development Planning Unit, University College of London
On the BMA building is a blue plaque commemorating that Charles Dickens once lived in Tavistock House on the site.
沒有留言:
張貼留言
注意：只有此網誌的成員可以留言。