Lincoln’s Inn Fields is named after the former recreation ground for lawyers learning and practising their profession at the adjacent Lincoln’s Inn – one of London’s four Inns of Court still operating today. Originally, two separate fields, it was home to public executions before becoming a training ground for parliamentarian troops during the English Civil War (1640s) – today attested by it being London’s largest square. The land become Crown property in the 1500s before being developed into parkland and elegant mansions after the Civil War and opened for public use in 1894.
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, looking westLincoln’s Inn Fields, showing its full extent east to west The City of London Police – identified by the red and white chequered head band At any one time, up to 6000 parliamentarian troops staged mock military engagementsThe former UK Land Registry building on the south-east corner, now part of The London School of Economics The entrance to Lincoln’s Inn, looking towards the Royal Courts of Justice. (Most of Lincoln’s Inn is either Georgian or Victorian rebuild of the original Tudor design)Lincoln’s Inn, unusually receiving visitors from the Metropolitan PoliceSir John Soane’s House, now a museum to the life, work and eclectic collections of the famous architect – one of London’s lesser-known gems
The square boasts many elegant early Georgian homes
A terrace of Georgian homes on the north side The nineteenth century bandstand doubles up for fitness training and boxerciseThe Royal College of Surgeons headquarters on the south sideThe Ship Tavern on the north west corner – one of London’s earliest pubsWhile you’re at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the London School of Economics lies just to its west. In the centre of the image, the 1961 St Clements’s mural by Harry Warren Wilson represents the River Thames and the subjects taught at the world-renowned school established in 1895
A work on campus by Mark Wallinger; ‘The world turned upside down’, 2019
‘Final sale’ by the Recycle Group, 2014, sits above the main entrance to the LSE opened by King George V in 1920
A new work by Tod Hanson depicts the area of London that LSE occupies, as represented in Charles Booth’s Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London (1886-1903) (poverty maps).
