Bevin Court occupies the site of the 1902–03 home of Lenin, where he lived while in exile editing the Russian socialist newspaper Iskra (Spark). In honour of the Soviet leader, the building was initially planned to be named "Lenin Court" and was to incorporate Lubetkin's memorial to Lenin, which had been located on the site of Holford Square since 1942. However British fascists repeatedly vandalised the memorial, to the extent that it required a 24-hour police guard.  

 

When it became clear that the Borough were no longer willing to keep the memorial on site Lubetkin buried its remains under the central core of the amazing staircase and the scheme was renamed Bevin Court (honouring Britain's firmly anti-communist Labour foreign secretary Ernest Bevin). 

 

• Walk back to Halford Street and then turn right into the gardens following a path to the left that leads you to Percy Circus…   ///tidy.sheet.frog

 

Percy Circus was begun in 1841, and completed by 1853. Uniquely complex, it has five unevenly spaced entry points, and is laid out on the side of a steep hill. Christopher Hussey, an authority on British domestic architecture, called it a 'monumental conception' and 'one of the most delightful bits of town planning in London’. That was in 1939 and it still delights today.

 

Very few examples of the circus form have survived in London. Around the railed central garden are fifteen of the original twenty-seven houses. The three northern sections were bombed, and nine of the twelve demolished houses have been replaced in ‘pastiche’ form - imitating the original buildings.

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Look across to the junction of Percy Circus and Vernon Rise to see a plaque commemorating the time Lenin spent in London mentioned above.