It is located close to the historic Tyburn, a site of public executions until the eighteenth century on the outskirts of London. The growing population of the capital led Samuel Pepys Cockerell to lay out an ambitious scheme for redeveloping the area as up-market residential district. Formally part of the Bishop of London's estate, the new plans were amended by George Gutch after Cockerell's death. Work began on Connaught Street and Square in the 1820s, and the first buildings were completed by 1828.[2]