The ‘Builders in St James-fields’

Architectural historian Lucy Inglis on the changing fortunes of the grand townhouses in what is arguably London’s finest Square.

For many members of the London Library, St James’s Square is home from home. Several times a week, I walk up from Pall Mall, cross the garden and arrive at No.14. Many of the buildings in the Square have become old friends, their façades familiar from a decade spent researching Georgian London. The Square has been a bastion of London clubs and institutions for more than a century, yet few will see the buildings ranged on every side in their intended guise: as townhouses for the English aristocracy.

The history of the Square is a snapshot of London in her prime: Henry Jermyn, Duke of St Albans (c.1604–84) was to build what is arguably London’s finest Square, and also start the race for London’s aristocrats to become hereditary landlords. Jermyn was described by a contemporary as ‘a man of pleasure … [he] entertains no other thoughts than to live at ease’ . Perhaps the ideal qualifications for a man to build a garden square designed to house London’s wealthiest families.

Fire and plague were spurring the building craze in London’s second city. The ancient City of London was at the turn of the eighteenth century a hive of rebuilding after the Great Fire, yet by 1692 not one soul possessed of a hereditary title lived there. The courtiers, and those who made their living through proximity to the court and royalty, had long ago migrated west, away from the crowds and disease, dwelling in the new Covent Garden development or leasing the old bishops’ palaces along the Strand.

When Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he was determined to rule in a style completely opposed to that of his father; relaxed and accessible, he worked hard to please his people and reward the friends who had remained loyal. Henry Jermyn had been a good friend, although his influence was deemed to be that of ‘the backstairs and the bed-chamber, but none the less valuable on that account’ . If Jermyn’s influence was indeed that of a friend and confidant, it was also worth money: in 1662 Charles gave him a 60- year lease on the 45 acres to the south of Piccadilly.

Jermyn, however, soon realised the potential of his lease and petitioned to have the land made over to him, explaining that ‘ye beauty of this great Towne and ye convenience of your Court are defective in point of houses fitt for ye dwellings of Noble men and other Persons of quality’ . In 1665 he became the freeholder, the land granted to him in perpetuity.

Henry Jermyn, Earl of St Albans, stipple engraving by Richard Godfrey, after Sylvester Harding, after Sir Peter Lely, published 7 April 1793. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Like most aristocratic landlords of his time Jermyn was no architect, but he did have a vision for his development and laid out the Square in plots that were to be leased to builders who were to build houses of ‘substantial character’ . He worked with trustees and fellow speculators Sir John Coell and Sir Thomas Clarges to make a plan, overseen, in theory, by the King himself. The City, protective of its water supply and alarmed by the expansion of London, was not so keen, as Samuel Pepys recorded on 2 September 1663: ‘The building of St. James’s by my Lord St Albans, which is now about, and which the City stomach, I perceive, highly, but dare not oppose it. ’ (Comparisons of London with the human body are a common device of the time, in this case with the new development giving the City indigestion.)

By 1666 St James’s Square had its first resident, Sir William Stanley, who was living on the north side of the Square. The rate books record him as owing a solitary pound, on which he defaulted. By 1667, Henry Jermyn was living in a house on the north-west corner of the Square (where it meets Duke of York Street), later to become Ormonde House. From there, he could watch over his blossoming development, both in the Square, and north towards Piccadilly.

J. Bowles’s View of St James’s Square, c.1752

A decade later, the Square had been divided up between speculative builders, such as Nicholas Barbon (son of City eccentric Praise-God-Barebones) and Jermyn’s friends including lords Arlington and Halifax. One of the first occupants, if not the first, on the site of the London Library, was Sir Fulke Lucy, a politician who deserves to be remembered for his splendid name and, like Stanley, for defaulting on his rates. The south side of the Square consisted of a row of houses fronting on to Pall Mall, not nearly as impressive as the rest of the Square, hence most early views look north.

In 1676, St James’s Square first appears as a separate place of residence, by which time the King’s ex-mistress Mary, or ‘Moll’ , Davis was living in the south-west corner. Samuel Pepys’s wife Elizabeth called her ‘the most impertinent slut in the world’ , which is presumably how she came by the £1,800 she paid for the property, aged 29.

St James’s Church, raised to service the Square and also the St James’s development, was built to the designs of Christopher Wren after 1672 and was consecrated in 1684. Samuel Clarke, one of Georgian London’s leading thinkers, was Rector for 20 years from 1709, and William Blake was baptised there in 1757. In 1762, Ince and Mayhew, makers of fine furniture for the aristocracy, had the only double wedding to be held there when they married two sisters.

In the early part of the eighteenth century, the Square retained its rural, though grand, appearance, echoing the rus in urbe ideal of nearby Buckingham House. Although Jermyn had thought to pave the Square early in its life, it never happened, and by the 1720s the central space was overgrown and beginning to resemble a refuse tip, with rubbish ditched there by all manner of residents and passers-by. It was clear that this could not continue and, in 1726, the residents decided to clean up their act, asking Parliament for permission to rate themselves for enough funds to ‘cleanse, adorn, and beautify’ the Square, which ‘hath for some years past lain, and doth

now lie, rude and in great disorder’ . Worse than the easily removed filth, a local coachmaker had the temerity to build a shed in the centre of the Square in which to store timber. The bill whooshed through both Houses in two months. The new rules included the stipulation that hackney carriages were not allowed to ply, or pick up, in the Square, but must drop off their fare and make the quickest exit.

Statue of William III, installed in 1808

The piles of rubbish were supposed to be replaced with a small ornamental lake and a fountain in 1727. The York Buildings Company won the contract to supply water, and after 1734 the Square was lit at night. Around this time the railings went in to frame the water feature (in roughly the same position, bordering the gardens, as they are today), and the rest of the Square outside them was paved. By 1735, the pedestal for the statue of King William III on horseback was in position where the fountain had been, although it would take until 1808 for the statue itself to appear (the pedestal is omitted from J. Bowles’s famous View of c.1752). Throughout the century, St James’s Square was a favourite venue for displaying fireworks, and many of the houses were illuminated both inside and out during celebrations.

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the great buildings began to appear. Matthew Brettingham’s Norfolk House on the south-east side for the Duke of that name was finished by 1756, and whilst the reviews of its splendid interior (some parts surviving in the Victoria and Albert Museum) were favourable, the plain exterior was unpopular. Norfolk House would remain until 1938, when it was pulled down to make the current offices. The little house at the back where George III was born in 1738 was being used as a storeroom at the time of the building’s demolition.

The dominant architects in the Square are Brettingham and Robert Adam, with James Stuart making his mark in 1764 with the Library’s immediate neighbour, No.15, also known as Lichfield House. From 1770, when Robert Adam began his reconstruction of No.20 for Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, the Square cemented its identity as the premier address for London’s townhouse-dwelling aristocrats. It was considered one of the finest of his smaller houses. It was rebuilt in 1936 to include No.21 in its frontage and is used as offices. (Also used as offices is No.33, Adam’s other contribution to the Square.) The fate of No.20 was almost very different when, in May 1884, the Fenians attempted ‘their diabolical pranks with dynamite’ there. They were thwarted by housemaids and the loss to the building was limited to the window-glass.

Before the Library came to inhabit No.14 in 1845, the house had previously been occupied by famous miser the 3rd Earl of Carbery, John Vaughan, once Governor of Jamaica, who sold his private chaplain into slavery rather than incur the expense of the man’s travel back to England. The movement of the Library into the Square from Pall Mall was following a trend started at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the emergence of clubs. The building of Regent Street made the east end of Pall Mall a thoroughfare for the upper classes and well-to-do, and soon clubs such as the Athenaeum and the Travellers sprang up there to cater for those who had to be, or preferred to be, away from home. As many will know, the Library was originally located on the first floor of the Travellers. The Library was established in the Square by the time the Junior Carlton Club (now defunct) and the East India Club moved in.

The Square continued to be solidly prosperous. The little lake in the centre was removed during the cholera outbreaks. Booth’s poverty map of 1898–9 predictably shows it clearly marked in the red and yellow of affluence with the words ‘clubs & private houses, clubs just encroaching on private houses’ . So, by the late 1880s, homeowners were being pushed from the Square. One of the most famous was Nancy Astor, the first female MP to sit in the House of Commons, whose home was in what is now the In and Out Club.

The twentieth century does not coat itself in glory as far as St James’s Square is concerned. The poor planning of the mid-1930s affected it, as did post-war rebuilding. The embassies, long present in the Square and famous for little more than an obstinate refusal to pay their rates, became notorious in 1984 with the siege of the Libyan Embassy, at that time occupying No.5. P.C. Yvonne Fletcher was shot during a demonstration, her killer never identified, and today the site is marked with a memorial placed against the railings on the north-east corner of the garden.

The Square became quiet and commercial, the Library ticking away in the corner throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century. From 2000 onwards, residents began to return to the Square, with new development drawing back a smart set, but it was in apartments, not houses, and the grandeur of the eighteenth century still eluded St James’s Square. Then, in 2008, Lichfield House changed hands for the first time since 1856, when Clerical, Medical and General had purchased it for £12,750. The new owners set about returning the house to its former glory. Paint and colour historian – and London Library member – Patrick Baty was brought in to advise on how to recreate the splendour of the house in its prime, and the results, as one can see even from the street, are magnificent.

The return of Lichfield House to a grand but private residence marks full circle for St James’s Square. For many the Square is a place of work, for some relaxation; for others it is home. For members of the London Library I like to think it is all these things at once.

Restored ceiling today in Lichfield House, No.15 St James’s Square, image courtesy of Patrick Baty, 2010.