Vincent Square

Vincent Square serves as a private, thirteen-acre green lung in the heart of London, but it originated as a rather grim stretch of marshy wasteland known as Tothill Fields. Long before it became a manicured playing field, this land functioned as a burial site for plague victims in the seventeenth century and a grim prison camp for Scottish soldiers captured during the Battle of Worcester. The square gained its current form in the early nineteenth century when William Vincent, the Dean of Westminster and a former headmaster of Westminster School, took a direct approach to its development. He personally paid a worker to use a horse and plow to cut a ditch and mound around the perimeter, effectively claiming the space for the school. That simple act of enclosure established a private boundary that remains enforced by the school to this day. While you cannot walk onto the field yourself, it remains one of the largest privately owned green spaces in central London. It continues to function as the primary sports ground for Westminster School, hosting cricket, football, and tennis. The surrounding architecture offers a look at several centuries of design, ranging from surviving three-story Victorian townhouses to later institutional buildings that once housed hospitals and professional colleges.