I've been struck over the last couple weeks, looking throughold newspapers, at the very surprising paucity of coverage about the beginnings of the Square. This is a significant drainage and town planning operation on a grand scale, as was the drainage work and building of Oxford Street for passage to the Botanic Garden, but the first decade and half of the nineteenth century I'm finding very very little in the newspapers. Town books and records yes, and I understand it was a period of growth everywhere, but we're talking about a prestige development planned to a grid pattern, aimed to emulate the great Squares of London.
Part of the problem of course is that it wouldn't have been named Abercrombie etc at that point, but the MossLake fields were very well known, and are mentioned with regularly in other contexts, so why no major stories on the great undertaking as it took shape, and also allowed access to the prestige Botanic Gardens?
Perhaps I've been unlucky and haven't hit the right papers yet but it seems very odd to me...