Finsbury Circus is a park in the City of London, England; with an area of 2.2 hectares it is the largest public open space within the City's boundaries. It is not to be confused with Finsbury Square, just north of the City, or Finsbury Park, a few kilometers away. The "circus" of the name reflects the elliptical shape of the space, similar to the circus venues of ancient Rome, in this case with a long axis lying east-west. It has a Lawn Bowls club in the centre, which has existed in the gardens since 1925. A bandstand, built in 1955, is located nearby.
History
The circus was created in 1812 on an area which was originally part of Finsbury Manor, having existed since 1527, on which the second Bethlem Royal Hospital had stood since 1675. The original houses, the last of which were demolished in 1921, were intended for merchants and gentlemen, but were soon broken up internally and leased for solicitors and other professions. The gardens, featuring a circuit of lime trees, were developed by William Montague to the specifications of the architect George Dance the Younger in 1815. In 1819 the London Institution moved into "ingeniously planned and elegantly detailed" premises designed by William Brooks at the north end of the circus; it closed in 1912 and the buildings were used for the University of London until their demolition in 1936. Fronting onto the circus from the 1820s was the substantial South Place Unitarian Chapel, erected under the leadership of William Johnson Fox; this evolved into Conway Hall Ethical Society. The circus was opened as a public park in the early 20th century, under powers granted to the City of London Corporation in the City of London Act 1900. The gardens had previously been a private space for the use of the freeholders or lease-holders of the surrounding buildings, who objected to their compulsory purchase, fearing that their use by the public would create a nuisance which would lower the value of their property. The campaign to make them a public space was led by Alpheus Morton, deputy-Alderman for Farringdon Without and a member of the Corporations' Streets Committee, and the circus became known with the Corporation as "Morton's Park". Fronting the northwest quadrant of the oval, with fronts on roads entering the Circus from the west stands Edwin Lutyens's massive Britannic House, designed for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which became BP; its free-standing architectural sculptures are by Francis Derwent Wood. It was built on the site of the last remaining original houses, and is now home to international law firm Stephenson Harwood. The nearest Tube station is Moorgate, to the West, and the park is also close to Liverpool Street Station; both are within about two hundred meters. It is located in the Coleman Street ward. Finsbury Circus has been used as the finish point for the Miglia Quadrato each year. In recent years it has also played host to the start of the Miglia Quadrato since the event start was removed from Smithfield Market.
During the years 1860–65 Finsbury Circus was threatened with demolition in favour of a railway station; public protests averted the loss, but in 1869 the oval was tunnelled for the Metropolitan Railway. From 2010 to 2020 the central section of the gardens have been taken up for the construction of the Liverpool Street Crossrail station. This has included the excavation of a 16m diameter, 42m depth shaft to allow the construction of the platform tunnels beneath. It will be fully restored once construction work is finished, with a possibility that the fountains will be returned to full working order. The project was due to be completed in September 2018, but due to mismanagement it missed that deadline, going over budget by £896,700 as of April 2019. The revised completion date is 2021. In July 2020, the City of London Corporation announced the park would reopen to the public in August 2020, after a call in June for design proposals to transform the gardens into a sustainable multipurpose space.
