Medical London walk

Lincoln’s Inn Fields is the largest public square in London. Before the 1600s, the fields were arable and pasture grounds, and the lawyers of Lincoln’s Inn vigorously opposed proposals for property development until 1639, when construction of the houses bordering the square began. In the aftermath of the Great Fire of London the fields became a refugee camp for those who had lost their houses, and later a place of execution.

In 1683 it was the site of the public beheading of Lord William Russell, son of the First Duke of Bedford. Russell had been found guilty of treason following his implication in the Rye House Plot, a group of noblemen who planned to assassinate King Charles II on his way back from horseracing at Newmarket. The executioner made such a poor job that four axe blows were required before Russell’s head was separated from his body. After the first stroke, Russell looked up and said to him ‘You dog, did I give you 10 guineas to use me so inhumanely?’

By the early 1700s, the square had become a receptacle for ‘rubbish, dirt and nastiness of all sorts’, where ‘robberies, assaults, outrages and enormities have been and continually are committed.’ But in 1734 the owners of the surrounding properties began to enclose and maintain the central area. The Fields were opened to the public in 1894, when the London County Council acquired a lease lasting until 2555. Buildings around the square include the Soane Museum, the headquarters of Cancer Research UK and the Royal College of Surgeons.