Vincent Square is a large grass-covered square in Westminster, London, England, covering 13 acres. It provides playing fields for Westminster School, which privately owns it.
It was created by Dean Vincent, Headmaster of Westminster School, a few hundred yards away, who, on seeing that development was beginning to encroach on the wastelands of Tothill Fields (which was a former plague pit), paid for a bank and ditch to enclose a suitable playing area for the schoolboys.
After the Second World War, the school resisted the efforts of the local authority to make the square available for public use.
The square contains a cricket pavilion, four football pitches, several tennis courts, and the groundsman's house, and is used every weekday by Westminster Under School during breaks.
Famous quotes containing the words vincent and/or square:
“I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)