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Russell Square is a large garden square in Bloomsbury, London. It is near the University of London main buildings and the British Museum. Russell Square tube station is nearby. In 2002 the square was re-landscaped in a style based on the original early 19th century layout, and the café in the square was redeveloped. The centrepiece of the new design is a fountain with jets playing directly from the pavement.
The square is named for the family of the Earls then Dukes of Bedford, who developed the family's London landholdings in the 17th and 18th centuries, beginning with Covent Garden behind Bedford house, their London seat. Russell Square is in a part of the former Bedford Estate which was built in approximately 1800. The square contained large terraced houses aimed mainly at upper middle class families. A number of the original houses survive especially on the western and northern sides: many are occupied by the University of London, and there is a blue plaque on one at the north west conrner commemorating that TS Eliot worked there for many years when he was poetry editor of Faber & Faber.
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