The central public gardens contain flower beds and mature trees, a pavilion or shelter, and a water fountain.

The antiquary Thomas Cromwell noted in 1828 that, presumably for financial reasons, the square was “completed in a form more circumscribed than was at first determined on, and with houses of a less lofty character”.

38-39) was not completed until 1841, by when Margery Street had been built behind the terrace, so that the road planned for the north side of the square had to be replaced with a high pedestrian walkway.

[1] By 1906, the area’s “uninteresting” early-19th century architecture was considered to be part of the “hideously inartistic style of that period”.

This side is a floor less in height, with a raised basement and a pedestrian walkway adjoining the centre gardens.

In 1883 the possibility was considered of building a church (which was later realised as Our Most Holy Redeemer, Exmouth Market) in the square.

[14] The first residents of Wilmington Square included engravers, solicitors, and figures from the world of arts, and also merchants and trades people.

[15] Amongst many other works, he authored Don Quixote or The Knight of the Woeful Countenance: A Romantic (Musical) Drama in Two Acts in 1833, Peerless Pool and The Knights of St John – a new Grand military and Chivalric Spectacle,[15] and the first stage adaptation of David Copperfield, entitled Born with a Caul in 1850.

He compiled the Church of England collection of hymns and psalms known as The Mitre Hymn-Book, which was first published in 1836 and attained a circulation of 4 million copies.

[1] Golding Bird, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and authority on kidney diseases, lived at his family home at no.

[3] Edward Daniel Johnson, watch and marine chronometer maker, lived and worked at no.

Frederick Goulding, printer of etchings and lithographs, studied at a school of art in the square in 1858 and 1859.

In the 1880s more than half of the square's houses were in divided occupation, but with a continuing professional presence, including clergymen, doctors and architects.

Aubrey Beardsley, illustrator, worked in the office of Ernest Carritt, the District Surveyor, at no.20 as an adolescent in 1888 for a salary of sixteen pounds a year.

[3] Charles Booth’s poverty map of c.1890 shows Wilmington Square households as “Middle class.

[10] In the late twentieth-century, gentrification resulted in the re-conversion of flats to houses, especially on the north side, and well-known figures such as the politician Peter Mandelson[20] and the ceramic and tapestry artist Grayson Perry[21] became residents.