Yes, that's relating to squares / plazas (which you could arguably include the Broadmead example).

This thread from a couple of years ago seems to go through the arguments pretty well - essentially just saying pedestrian roads mapped with area=yes are likely from before area:highway=pedestrian was a thing : https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/are-pedestrian-areas-tagging-for-the-renderer/107162/29