Spring Gardens

<h2 id="occupants">Occupants</h2>
The Whig playwright and poet <a href="/facts/Susanna_Centlivre/ebU3Ws0m">Susanna Centlivre</a> (c.1669 – 1723), who has been described as "the most successful female playwright of the eighteenth century", spent the end of her life here, and wrote her most famous work <a href="/facts/A_Bold_Stroke_for_a_Wife/XEB9NWjb">A Bold Stroke for a Wife</a> at her home at the corner of Buckingham Court, Spring Gardens, in 1718.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:1" href="#fn:1">1</a>
The 19th-century architect <a href="/facts/Decimus_Burton/vDBf6XqY">Decimus Burton</a> bought a plot at Spring Gardens, where he constructed Nos. 10, 12, and 14 Spring Gardens as both his townhouse and his own office.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2">2</a>

The headquarters of the <a href="/facts/Metropolitan_Board_of_Works/HVyg93QA">Metropolitan Board of Works</a>, which had moved from the <a href="/facts/London_Guildhall/Ifxa2DNL">London Guildhall</a>, was based at Spring Gardens, as was the <a href="/facts/London_County_Council/8l1HlEoL">London County Council</a>, until it moved to <a href="/facts/County_Hall%2c_London/TapBDTNE">County Hall</a>. This building has since been demolished.
The area hosted an open-air market for milk, the Milk Fair, from the formation of the Mall; this was closed before <a href="/facts/World_War_I/vITTUanQ">World War I</a>.
The buildings now at Spring Gardens include:

<ul><li>the Trafalgar Hotel</li>
<li>the former headquarters (from 1974 to 2020) of the <a href="/facts/British_Council/zdz5k2sS">British Council</a></li>
<li>The <a href="/facts/National_Institute_for_Health_and_Care_Excellence/83vtP8Lk">National Institute for Health and Care Excellence</a> (NICE)'s London site, since 2013.</li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Hutton, Laurence (1893). Literary Landmarks of London (8th ed.) New York: Harpers & Brothers, p. 41. <a href="https://archive.org/details/literarylandmar08huttgoog/page/41/mode/1up?view=theater" target="_blank">https://archive.org/details/literarylandmar08huttgoog/page/41/mode/1up?view=theater</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">Williams, Guy (1990). Augustus Pugin Versus Decimus Burton: A Victorian Architectural Duel. London: Cassell Publishers Ltd. p. 55. ISBN 0-304-31561-3. <a href="0-304-31561-3" target="_blank">0-304-31561-3</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
</ol>

Spring Gardens open-in-new

Spring Gardens