Nelson Square

[1] It was laid out around 1807 as upmarket terraced housing and named after Admiral Horatio Nelson whose death during his victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 made him a national hero.

The railway running towards Blackfriars Station passes near the eastern end of the square on a viaduct.

The square was developed on land owned by Sir Francis Wood, 2nd Baronet, and was most likely entirely designed by the architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell.

[4] The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley lodged at 26 Nelson Square, which was later commemorated by a blue plaque until a German bombing raid in the Second World War destroyed the building.

Other notable residents have included Thomas Barnes, the editor of The Times, and the surgeon Charles Aldis.

44–47 Nelson Square. The surviving original buildings, formerly the home of the Blackfriars Settlement .
Image of the blue plaque that once stood on the former residence of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley . The property was destroyed in a Second World War air raid .
View of the square during the 1980s. High rise buildings having mostly replaced the original Regency houses.