Manchester Square is an 18th century garden square in the Marylebone

Marylebone

Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London, located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone or Mary-le-bone....

 area in London, England, a short distance north of Oxford Street

Oxford Street

Oxford Street is a major thoroughfare in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, United Kingdom. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, as well as its most dense, and currently has approximately 300 shops. The street was formerly part of the London-Oxford road which began at Newgate,...

. It is one of the smaller but better preserved Georgian

Georgian architecture

Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...

 squares in central London. The central section of the northern side of the square is occupied by a mansion once known as Manchester House and later as Hertford House, which is now the home of the Wallace Collection

Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London, with a world-famous range of fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with large holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms & armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries.It was established in...

, a major collection of fine and decorative arts. The house and square form part of Marylebone's Portman Estate

Portman Estate

The Portman Estate is a property estate in Marylebone, Central London. It lies between Oxford Street and Edgware Road, and includes Portman Square, Manchester Square, and some parts of Baker Street and Gloucester Place....

. Construction on both was underway by around 1776.

Famous residents in the square have included Julius Benedict

Julius Benedict

Sir Julius Benedict was a German-born composer and conductor, resident in England for most of his career.-Life:...

, the German-born composer, who lived at no. 2, John Hughlings Jackson

John Hughlings Jackson

John Hughlings Jackson, FRS , was an English neurologist.- Biography :He was born at Providence Green, Green Hammerton, near Harrogate, Yorkshire, the youngest son of Samuel Jackson, a yeoman who owned and farmed his land, and the former Sarah Hughlings, the daughter of a Welsh revenue collector...

, the English neurologist, who lived at no. 3, and Alfred, Lord Milner

Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner

Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner KG, GCB, GCMG, PC was a British statesman and colonial administrator who played an influential leadership role in the formulation of foreign and domestic policy between the mid-1890s and early 1920s...

, the British statesman and colonial administrator, at no. 14. In 1814–15 Manchester Square became briefly famous, when newspapers reported that a pig-faced woman was living there.

The Beatles

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

 cover photograph of their first LP

LP album

The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

 Please Please Me was taken by Angus McBean

Angus McBean

Angus McBean , was a Welsh photographer, associated with surrealism.-Biography:Angus McBean was born in South Wales in June 1904. Despite the surname and the family's claim to be head of the sub-clan McBean, they had been Welsh for generations. Clem McBean was a surveyor in the mines and the family...

 in 1963 of the group looking down over the stairwell inside EMI

EMI

The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

 house, EMI's London headquarters, in Manchester Square at the time (now demolished). A repeat photo taken in 1969 was intended for their Let It Be album but eventually used on the retrospective albums 1962–1966 and 1967–1970.

In the early 21st century, the chemical company ICI

Imperial Chemical Industries

Imperial Chemical Industries was a British chemical company, taken over by AkzoNobel, a Dutch conglomerate, one of the largest chemical producers in the world. In its heyday, ICI was the largest manufacturing company in the British Empire, and commonly regarded as a "bellwether of the British...

moved into a new headquarters in the north west corner of the square, which was designed in a style that blends in with the traditional architecture to some extent. The remainder of the square is still occupied by tall brick Georgian terraced houses, many of which are now offices.