Brunswick Square, Public garden in Bloomsbury, London, United Kingdom
Brunswick Square is a public garden in Bloomsbury, London, laid out with rectangular lawns, mature trees, gravel pathways, and ornamental iron railings along its borders. The pathways cross through the center of the space, dividing it into clearly defined sections.
The land was formerly part of the Foundling Hospital, founded in 1739 as London's first institution for abandoned children. When the hospital closed in the 1920s, the grounds were redesigned as a public garden open to all.
Brunswick Square appears in Jane Austen's novel Emma as the London home of characters John and Isabella Knightley. Readers of the novel still visit the square today to walk through this setting.
The garden has several entrances around its perimeter and is open from morning until dusk every day. The nearest Underground station sits to the southwest, making the garden easy to reach on foot from that direction.
The Foundling Museum, just north of the garden, holds small tokens that mothers left with their babies when giving them up, such as coins, ribbons, and fabric scraps, so they could one day identify them. Most of those reunions never happened, and the objects have remained in the collection ever since.
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