page_title: St George's Circus
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: St George's Circus / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A picture of the large base and broken pillar into blocks of the obelisk in Plot 81, South Side, St. George the Martyr Avenue, Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, Surrey, England
context_page_description: St George's Circus is a road junction in Southwark, London, England. At its centre, which is now a traffic roundabout, is an historic obelisk, designed by Robert Mylne, in his role as surveyor and architect of Blackfriars Bridge.
context_section_description: St George's Circus was built in 1771 to mark the completion of the new roads through St George's Fields in the parish of Southwark St George the Martyr during the tenure of Brass Crosby as Lord Mayor of the City of London. It was the first purpose-built traffic junction in London, and initially featured an obelisk with four oil lamps affixed to it. The obelisk was removed in 1897 for a clocktower, to commemorate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. In 1905, it was relocated to what is now the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, in front of the Imperial War Museum. The clocktower was demolished as a "nuisance to traffic" in the 1930s, but the obelisk did not return to its original location until 1998, by then without the oil lamps. At the base of the obelisk is the inscription Erected in XI year of the reign of King George MDCCLXXI, with the inscriptions on the other three sides reflecting the obelisk's distances from Palace Yard (one mile), London Bridge (one mile 40 feet) and Fleet Street (one mile 350 feet). The obelisk has been Grade II listed since 1950, when it was in its previous location.
  The landscaping introduced in the centre of the circus when the obelisk returned incorporated a semi circle of soil in which two Cabbage Palms were planted.  This was then neglected and fell into long term decay until in 2005 guerrilla gardeners took over the land.  They subsequently replanted it with lavender, rosemary, tulips, campanula, azalea and even a 7' Christmas tree, but is no longer planted.
  The circus and obelisk provided a formal termination of Blackfriars Road, a mile long boulevard from the recently constructed Blackfriars Bridge.  At the circus, Blackfriars Road intersected with new and existing highways to Lambeth, Newington, Westminster Bridge and The Borough at Southwark. In local parlance the area was known as the "obliss", it was a destination point for both trams and busses, so passengers, - if they so wished - could ask for a "tuppeny to the obliss please guv."
  The St George’s Fields (Surrey) Improvement Act 1812 required that all new building around the circus should have concave fronts and should be consistent with a minimum diameter across the Circus of 240 ft. It also specified that no houses “inferior to the 3rd building rate should be erected on the frontages of Borough Road and St. George’s Circus”.
  Following the construction of Waterloo Bridge, Waterloo Road was also cut through to terminate nearby, but this was not part of the original formal layout.   Following the growth of nearby industry, and the construction of a railway viaducts by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in the 1860s bringing noise and smoke pollution, the area become less popular as a middle class residential suburb.  The surrounding streets contain a number of social housing estates constructed by the City of London Corporation and Peabody Trust, dating from the Victorian era to the 1950s.
  St George’s Circus was the location of a tube station on the abortive City & Brixton Railway, which was authorised by the City & Brixton Railway Act 1898 but which was never built.
  The south side of the circus was originally occupied by the School for the Indigent Blind. This was reconstructed and enlarged in the 1830s, but subsequently moved out of London.   The site is now occupied by a brick building of 1901 on the same scale as the adjacent terraces. This conceals the subsurface depot for London Underground's Bakerloo line.
  In 1900 a replica of the obelisk was placed in Brookwood Cemetery to mark where human remains from the crypt of St George the Martyr Southwark were reburied in 1899. Located on St. George the Martyr Avenue in plot 81 in the South side of the cemetery, this replica has subsequently toppled due to the subsidence of the remains beneath it.
caption: The fallen replica of the St George's Circus obelisk, in Brookwood Cemetery.
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