Cavendish Square Gardens

Cavendish Square was born from a marriage, not a master plan. In seventeen thirteen, Edward Harley, the second Earl of Oxford, married Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, an heiress whose lands included the village of Marylebone. The Earl envisioned a grand estate here, centered on this square, but his ambitions were derailed when the South Sea Bubble financial crisis wiped out the funding for many of the palatial townhouses originally planned for the site.