Smith Square

Orientation & Geography

Europe, United Kingdom, London

Smith Square is a square located in Westminster, part of the City of Westminster in London, which is notable for St John's, Smith Square, the church in the middle of the square now used as a concert hall. The square is notable in political history as the location of Conservative Central Office, the Conservative Party's headquarters between 1958 and 2003, (now Europe House, the London base of the European Parliament and the European Commission), and Transport House which from 1928 to 1980 was the headquarters of the Labour Party - and also the offices of theTGWU until the 1990s. It is now the headquarters of the Local Government Association At No. 17 is Nobel House, built in 1928 for the newly formed Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). ICI leased it to the government in 1987, and it is currently headquarters for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The campaigning journalist William Thomas Stead lived at No. 5 from 1904 until his death on board the Titanic in 1912. Another famous resident was Rab Butler, the Conservative Deputy Prime Minister. The square was named after the Smith family, on whose land it was developed in the early eighteenth century. The original development of the square was carried out by Sir James Smith around 1726. Numbers one to nine are part of this original development. Sir John Smith, who was Conservative M.P. for Cities of London and Westminster from 1965 to 1970, lived at no. 1.