Bedford Square is named after Bedford House, the ancestral home of the 5th Duke of Bedford. This was knocked down in 1800 and replaced with Georgian housing designed by James Burton.
Various statues stand on the north side, including Charles Fox (leader of the Whig Party in the 1790s) and Richard Westmacott.
Bedford Square used to be home to numerous publishing houses, including Virginia Woolf’s Bodley House, but they all moved out in the nineties.