De Beauvoir Square is a classically laid out garden square and is protected under the London Squares Preservation Act of 1931. The square consists of beautiful rose beds and lawn areas as well as a children's play area and is host to a number of small neighbourhood events.
The park holds a Green Flag award. The awards are given to the best green spaces in the country and are awarded each year to make sure the quality of the green space remains high.
The Ramblers have devised a lovely walk of under an hour that goes through De Beauvoir Square. Leaving the bustle behind, the walk uses quiet roads and estate paths to visit squares and gardens from three different centuries. This walk passes through Evergreen Square, Albion Square and De Beauvoir Square. For more information see Get walking, keep walking.
History
19th century
Until 1820 the area now covered by De Beauvoir Town was open country with a few grand houses. In 1821, stimulated by the opening of the Regent's Canal the previous year, developer William Rhodes secured a lease for 150 acres (0.61 km2) of land from Peter de Beauvoir. Rhodes planned to build residences for the upper classes in a grid pattern, with four squares on diagonal streets intersecting at an octagon. However, work stopped in 1823 when Rhodes was found to have obtained his lease unfairly and after a court case spanning over 20 years the land reverted to the de Beauvoir family in 1834.[1]
The delay in building had meant that Rhodes' clientele had since moved on to the new suburbs of the West End. The scheme was scaled down and of the planned squares only the southeastern was built, as De Beauvoir Square, although the diagonals partly survived in Enfield Road, Stamford Road and Ardleigh Road. Occupied in the 1840s by the newly emerging middle classes, the estate was almost wholly residential except around Kingsland Basin and the south-west corner where a factory was leased from 1823.[1]
20th Century
De Beauvoir Estate, completed in 1971
[2]
In 1937, due to its easy access to Kingsland Basin, the south-east corner between Downham Road and Hertford Road was re-zoned for industrial use. Soon after all the area south of Downham Road was included. This distinguished it from the north side of Downham Road, which was already zoned for business and acted as a buffer for the mainly residential streets beyond. In 1938 De Beauvoir Crescent was suggested as another business zone to protect housing to the north.
In the early 1960s the northern part of De Beauvoir Town between Buckingham Road and Tottenham Road was rebuilt as the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney's Kingsgate estate. In the late 1960s a larger area west of the canal basin, which contained many small factories, made way for the De Beauvoir Estate. The east side of De Beauvoir Square was also lost to the Lockner Road estate. In 1968 the De Beauvoir Town association was formed. The rest of the square with the area bounded by Englefield Road, Northchurch Road, Southgate Road, Hertford Road, and Stamford Road became a conservation area in 1969. This area was later extended to cover most of De Beauvoir Town; the eastern edge, however, is in the Kingsland conservation area.