Hans Place

Hans Place is defined by its unusual shape, which was designed by the architect Henry Holland in the late eighteenth century. Instead of a standard square, he laid it out as a rectangle with its corners clipped off, forming an elongated octagon. This deliberate geometry was intended to accommodate the turning radius of horse-drawn carriages, allowing them to arrive and depart from the townhouses with ease. The central green space remains a rare survival from Holland's original vision for this area, then known as Hans Town. He named the development after the physician and collector Sir Hans Sloane, whose immense collection of curiosities provided the foundation for the British Museum. The garden itself maintains its original oval footprint, even though most of the surrounding houses were rebuilt during the late nineteenth century. That later redevelopment introduced the distinctive red-brick architecture seen today, which critics and locals famously dubbed Pont Street Dutch. This style features tall, gabled facades and an ornate look that became the signature of the surrounding Cadogan Estate. You might notice how these five-story buildings create a much tighter, more enclosed feeling around the garden than the modest three-story homes that occupied the site in the late seventeen-hundreds. The house at number twenty-three has a special place in literary history because the novelist Jane Austen resided there during her final visits to London. She stayed with her brother, Henry, in 1814 and 1815 while she was preparing her novel Emma for publication. Austen described the home as a delightful place and expressed a sincere fondness for the private garden that sits at the center of the square. Beyond its literary connections, the square also served as a secret headquarters during a major geopolitical event. In 1921, the delegation responsible for negotiating the Anglo-Irish Treaty used a property at number twenty-two as their base of operations. It was within those walls that the team made the final, historic decision to recommend the treaty to the Irish parliament, an act that fundamentally reshaped the relationship between the two nations.