Cleaver Square

Cleaver Square is one of Kennington’s most complete Georgian set-pieces: a rectangle of three-storey stock-brick terraces enclosing a gravelled central garden where residents play pétanque. The Prince of Wales pub anchors the north-west corner, its original 1792 bones hidden behind an Edwardian refacing. At the south-east end, the City and Guilds of London Art School—formerly the Lambeth School of Art—brings a creative energy that feels fitting for a square that has always attracted painters, businessmen, and prime ministers alike.

2015

Cleaver Square, Kennington

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

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Historical image not found

Today

Cleaver Square, Kennington

Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

The square sits quietly between Kennington Road and Kennington Park Road, its entrance flanked by an elegant pair of terraces that predate the square itself. The name on the street sign looks timeless, but “Cleaver” only arrived in 1937. Before that, everyone called it Prince’s Square—and before that, it was a cow pasture.

The square takes its name from Mary Cleaver, who inherited the land in 1743. At that point, as documented by British History Online, the estate was a large open pasture screened from the high road by a line of trees and known as White Bear Field. Mary Cleaver never developed the land herself—she leased it in 1780 to Thomas Ellis, landlord of the Horns Tavern on Kennington Common, who built the square. The entrance terraces on Kennington Park Road were built for a Joseph Prince and the whole development was called Prince’s Square, a name it kept for over a century and a half.

The London County Council renamed it Cleaver Square in 1937, belatedly honouring the woman whose family had owned the ground on which it stood. The residents were not universally pleased: a newspaper cutting from before the renaming records a storm of protest from tenants opposing the change. The old name lingered—the painted lettering “Prince’s Square” remained faintly visible on a wall at the Kennington Park Road entrance for years afterwards.

The land that became Cleaver Square lay untouched until the mid-18th century. Until then, the locality consisted of hedgerows, fields and meadows traversed by the turnpike road from the City to Clapham, with very few buildings—mostly scattered farms and taverns. Development only became viable after Westminster Bridge opened in 1750 and Blackfriars Bridge in 1770, providing easy access from the north. Building leases for the locality were granted by Act of Parliament in 1776, and it was then that Thomas Ellis, landlord of the ancient Horns Tavern on Kennington Common, took his opportunity.

Ellis built the square in phases across six decades. Houses on the north-west side came first in 1789, followed by numbers 34–41 in 1792. The gap-fill continued: numbers 42–46 between 1815 and 1824, and numbers 21–33 between 1844 and 1853. By the 1870s the area had lost its fashionable status. Overcrowding was severe—the 1881 census counted 481 residents, three houses each sheltering 14 people. The London County Council later had plans to purchase the square compulsorily and replace it with blocks of flats, but a storm of protest forced them to withdraw.

The square has been an artist’s subject as well as an artist’s address. Peter Snow’s 1988 oil painting Cleaver Square from Kennington Park Road is held by the Southwark Art Collection, and his earlier 1985 work The Passing World—painted from the window of his home at 131 Kennington Park Road—is held by the Museum of London. Both works capture the square’s Georgian terraces from almost the same vantage point, separated by three years and a shift in mood from daylight to nocturnal tone. The square’s south-east border is defined by the City and Guilds of London Art School, formerly the Lambeth School of Art, which ensures a continuing creative presence at its edge.

Patrick McGrath’s 2021 novel Last Days in Cleaver Square used the address as the setting for a meditation on the end of life, giving the square a literary existence to match its visual one. The square also sits within the Kennington Conservation Area, first designated in 1968 and extended in 1979 and 1997, which protects its historic character against unsympathetic development.

The square has drawn a notably varied cast of residents. The artist Innes Fripp lived here, as did Sir Saxon Tate Bt, the businessman behind the Tate & Lyle sugar empire, who resided at number 26 as of 2003. The square’s most famous recent resident is Sir John Major, who moved to Cleaver Square in Kennington after his party’s defeat in the 1997 general election. His choice of address was, by several accounts, at least partly motivated by proximity to The Oval cricket ground, where he has long been a member of Surrey County Cricket Club.

Thomas Ellis, the Horns Tavern landlord who developed the square from 1780, is perhaps the most consequential figure in its story, though he left no house of his own there. It was Ellis who secured the lease from Mary Cleaver, laid out the roads, enclosed the central green, and drove the piecemeal construction across four decades. Without him, White Bear Field might have been developed very differently—or not at all.

The central garden’s survival was not guaranteed. The Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth acquired it in 1927 specifically to prevent any development on the space—a direct response to the threat of building. The garden was restored as a public space from 1995 with a grant from the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. The restoration returned it to communal use after decades of neglect, including wartime disruption, and established the gravelled pétanque area and tree planting that residents enjoy today.

Community life at the square has deepened in recent decades. The residents’ association, established in 1963, organises an annual carol service in the square, seasonal clean-up days, and a supper club. A small community garden in adjacent Bowden Street—known as Charlie’s Patch, after Charlie Chaplin who once lived opposite—was regenerated by residents in 2025 with support from Lambeth Council.

Cleaver Square remains one of the most intact Georgian addresses in Kennington. The Prince of Wales pub at number 48 still anchors the corner it has occupied since 1792, now a free house after its long tenure as a Shepherd Neame tied house ended in 2019. Pétanque sets are available to hire from the pub, for play on the gravelled centre—a use that would have baffled Thomas Ellis, who designed it as a grazing ground. The square is a registered historic square, protected from inappropriate development, and sits within the Kennington Conservation Area as confirmed by SE1 Direct and local authority records.

The nearest green spaces extend across a generous sweep of south London. Kennington Park, a short walk south, was the site of the great Chartist gathering of 1848. Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’ successor, Archbishop’s Park, lies to the north, while the Imperial War Museum gardens are minutes away. The square itself, with its central garden accessed by keyed gates for residents, remains the most immediate green space—just as Ellis intended in 1792, though rather more ornamental than his grazing ground.