St. James’s Park, London

Queen Anne's Gate

My regular Blogistas will know that one of my favourite areas of London is St. James’s Park and the Queen Anne enclave around it known as Queen Anne’s Gate and Old Queen Street. St. James’s Park is in fact one of 3 Royal Parks which provide the setting for Buckingham Palace, London’s great ceremonial avenue, The Mall, and the ceremonial parade ground of Horseguard’s Parade. The Green Park was originally a swampy burial ground for lepers; but by 1668, Charles II had enclosed it and stocked it with deer, again to indulge the regal passion for hunting. It was designed by the French landscape architect Le Notre and it is a “Green Park” as it has no flower beds. The third park is less well known; being the 32 acre enclosed walled garden of Buckingham Palace which contains another lake. We last visited St. James’s Park when it was covered in snow but now it is in its spring glory and where its flower beds try to recreate the colourful displays of its designer John Nash.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/02/london-snow.html

With its royal, political and literary associations, St James's Park is at the very heart of London and covers 23 hectares (58 acres). With a lake harbouring ducks, geese and pelicans. St James's is also home to the Mall, the setting for many ceremonial parades and events of national celebration. The land now known as St James’s Park was acquired by King Henry VIII in 1532 as a game park for hunting, but has evolved over 4 centuries of Royal patronage into an elegant open space spanning 23 hectares (58 acres) with a lake harbouring ducks, geese and pelicans - the latter introduced by a Russian Ambassador in 1664. A popular spectacle and photo opportunity for tourists is to see the wildlife officers feeding the Pelicans every day at 2:30pm.




St. James's Park Pelicans



St James's Park is the oldest Royal Park in London and is surrounded by three palaces. The most ancient is Westminster, which has now become the Houses of Parliament, St James's Palace and of course, the best known, Buckingham Palace. There has been a Westminster Palace for almost a thousand years; however much of the current building - more frequently called the Houses of Parliament dates from 1834 - when fire swept through the earlier medieval buildings.


Buckingham Palace




Queen Anne's Gates

Originally the park was a swampy wasteland which the River Tyburn often flooded on its way to the Thames. It was, however, ideal land for deer hunting, the passion of kings and queens at the time. The royal court was based at the Palace of Westminster and in 1536; King Henry VIII decided to create a deer park conveniently nearby. He acquired land in St James's, put a fence around it and built a hunting lodge that later became St James's Palace.


Park Layout


London Eye from St James's Park

The deer park stayed largely the same until 1603 when James I became king. He drained and landscaped the park. At the west end, near what is now Buckingham Palace, there was a large pool known as Rosamond's Pond. At the east end, there were several small ponds, channels and islands. These were used as a duck decoy to lure birds that were shot for the royal table.





In the 1820s, the park got another great makeover. It was remodelled in the new naturalistic style. The canal became a curving lake. Winding paths replaced formal avenues. Fashionable shrubberies took over from traditional flower beds. Buckingham House was enlarged to create a new palace with a vast arch faced in marble at the entrance. And the Mall was turned into a grand processional route. The work was commissioned by the Prince Regent, later George lV. It was part of a huge project that created many of London's best-known landmarks, including Regent's Park and Regent's Street. It was overseen by the architect and landscaper, John Nash. He produced the designs in 1827 and within a year the work on St James's Park was finished.


John Nash



With its royal, political and literary associations, St James’s Park is considered by many to be the most impressive of all the Royal Parks in London, yet the landscape remains largely unchanged to that which was designed by the architect John Nash in the 1820s.

Outside Buckingham Palace is the Queen Victoria Memorial, which celebrates the days of the British Empire. The memorial includes not only the marble statue of Victoria and the glittering figures of Victory, Courage and Constancy, but also the ornamental gates given by the Dominions. These are the Australia Gate, South Africa Gate and Canada Gate.


Towards Horseguards Parade

Old Queen Street and adjacent Queen Anne’s Gate are set in the Birdcage Walk Conservation Area and contain some of London’s most striking William and Mary, Queen Anne and Georgian architecture. Past residents include peers, industrialists and philosophers, amongst whom are Lords Colchester, Guernsey, Dartmouth and Derby: Lords Grey, North and Palmerston (19th C. Prime Ministers): painters Joshua Reynolds and Jonathan Richardson: industrialists and the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Elsewhere in the street lived William Smith, the grandfather of Florence Nightingale, and Lord (John) Fisher, first sea lord of the Admiralty. In the early 20th century Lord Haldane, the War Minister, hosted political soirees at number 16, while at number 1 lived Sir Edward Grey, foreign secretary in the crucial years preceding the First World War.





“To stumble upon this most exquisite of streets...is one of London’s best architectural surprises...also about the only place where you will see London houses of the 18th century in near-mint condition.”



Long regarded as one of the most beautiful streets in London, this peaceful enclave of elegant houses dating from 1704 was originally known as Queen Square. At its eastern end a statue of Queen Anne stood against a wall that effectively sealed it off from the drunken, brawling mobs attending the nearby "Royal Cockpit." In the 1770s a new thoroughfare, Park Street, was developed on th other side of the wall. The cockpit was demolished in 1816, and in 1874 the wall came down, the two cul-de-sacs becoming Queen Anne’s Gate. The end of the present street which contains the pedestrian thoroughfare into St. James’s Park which was known as Queen's Square until 1704 has houses with distinctive and uniform ornate canopies and door cases. It was part of the estate of Sir Theodore Jansen, one of the directors of the South Sea Co. In the "great bubble" year of 1720 the estate was seized and sold towards payment of debts.


Cockpit Steps


Queen Anne

The local pub “The Two Chairmen” refers not to the Captains of Industry in the area but to the practice of ladies using Sedan Chairs to navigate the uneven and often dirty streets of 17th Century London. Many of the wealthy owned their own sedan chairs but hired chairmen to carry them as the need arose. The sedan chairs belonging to the gentry were often quite elaborate, with rich upholstery and painted bodies or wooden crests on the roof. These private sedan chairs were often beautifully painted by the most renowned painters of the day. They were often purchased from furniture makers and appear in furniture catalogs of the day. John Walter a furniture maker who provided furniture for the new Assembly Rooms at Bath in around 1770 also built sedan chairs. The diary of the Earl of Bristol notes that he paid £14 l0s for a private sedan chair in 1735. This is also the reason why the houses in the street have wide hallways; they had to be big enough to accommodate a chair.

The public chairs waited on stands in the street just as hackney coaches did. London and Westminster issued 300 sedan chair permits in the early 1700's. The chairmen were licensed and had to display a number. It cost £1 1 shilling to hire a sedan chair for a week. Chairmen wore a distinctive uniform, varying slightly over the decades and between winter and summer. It consisted of a blue kersey coat or greatcoat, black knee-breeches, white stockings or gaiters, buckled shoes, and large cocked hat. In England, the two-man chair survived well into the 1800's because it was actually quicker to walk than to ride in London's narrow, uneven streets; at the same time, it often was too dirty and/or unsafe to walk in many areas. Eventually the sedan chair was superseded by the cab. Charles Dickens includes an episode about a sedan chair in Pickwick Papers. Jane Austen mentions them in her Gothic pastiche Northanger Abbey.




Two Chairmen

Today, after three centuries, these dignified old houses with their richly-carved canopies rank among the most attractive in central London, and retain the comfortable, solid look of Queen Anne herself. Her statue, now re-sited on the pavement, has given rise to the legend that the tippling Queen, known as “Brandy Nan”, descends from her pedestal on the anniversary of her death to stagger along the street knocking on every door to beg a balloon of brandy.



Among the most celebrated residents of Queen Anne’s Gate were two famous architects in the early part of the 20th Century. Sir Edwin Lutyens RA (1869-1944) had his office at number 17 from the year 1910, arriving from his home in Bedford Square at 10am each morning by taxi. It seems that Lutyens was not one for creature comforts: his workroom was described as “repellently barren” with the chimney-piece torn out.
Nevertheless, Lutyens certainly found inspiration within its walls, for it was during his time there, in July 1919, that the Prime Minister Lloyd George asked him to design a temporary “catafalque” in Whitehall for the planned peace celebrations following the Armistice that brought the Great War to an end. “Not a catafalque,” replied Lutyens, “but a Cenotaph”. Setting to work he apparently completed his design that same day. So popular was the result that it was re-erected in stone, and Lutyen’s permanent Cenotaph was unveiled on Armistice Day 1920.


Old Queen St


No. 32 Garden facing Park


32, Old Queen St

At number 19 next door, meanwhile, another renowned architect had taken up residence: Sir Aston Webb (1849-1930) originally made his name for his design for the Victoria law courts in Birmingham. His success meant he could purchase the freehold of 19 Queen Anne’s Gate from the Mountjoy Estates Ltd. Webb went on to design some of the most prominent sights of Edwardian London, including the Admiralty Arch (1905-1911) and the precincts of Sir Thomas Brock’s memorial to Queen Victoria that stands in front of Buckingham Palace. Webb was also responsible for refacing the entrance front of the Palace in 1913. Renowned for his charm and courtesy, Webb’s huge ginger moustache completely obscured his mouth, giving the impression of secretiveness. In 1924, Webb was injured in a traffic accident while returning home to 19 Queen Anne’s Gate from the Royal Academy annual dinner, and never really recovered. In the late 1920s he moved from Queen Anne’s Gate to 1 Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park, where he died in 1930.


Queen Victoria Memorial


The Mall towards Admiralty Arch

For more than a century, Queen Anne’s Gate had been lit by gas lamps, but when conversion to electricity came along; Westminster city council opted for clear tungsten lighting and fitted the lamps into old reconditioned square-panelled “Windsor” lanterns. To this day the street remains lit in an unobtrusive and unpretentious manner, as befits its character.

Queen Anne style refers to the period of English architecture during the reign of Queen Anne (1702–14), when the English Baroque style of Wren, Vanbrugh, Archer, and Hawksmoor came to maturity, notably with Vanbrugh's Blenheim Palace, Oxon. (1705–25), and Nicholas Hawksmoor's London churches (e.g. Christ Church, Spitalfields of 1714–29). Domestic architecture of the time was derived from Carolean and Dutch precedents: in London, for example, houses were mainly faced with red brick, had tall sash-windows and canopy-like timber door-cases, while roofs became flatter and hidden behind parapets. Plainness and dignified restraint marked the domestic architecture in Britain and the American Colonies, and were influential virtues appreciated by later generations, especially from c.1860 to c.1890 and again in C20.


Crown on ceremonial flagpole along The Mall

The continuation of Queen Anne’s Gate, Old Queen Street, also refers to Queen Anne as she was known as the “Old Queen.” In fact she merely looked old as she died at the age of 49 having suffered no less than 14 miscarriages. She was succeeded by Georg, elector of Hanover who anglicised his name as George I and was the first of the 4 George’s who gave us the Georgian Period (1715 – 1830). My favourite Trivial Pursuit question is “what speech defect did George I suffer from?” the answer being that he couldn’t speak English!

Today, along with Church Row in Hampstead the street contains London’s oldest occupied houses but as they typically change hands from £4 million to £8 + (facing the park) it is now the home of the new plutocrats such as Sting and Camilla Sainsbury and her husband the Northern Ireland Secretary, Shaun Woodward. As we say in these parts "it ain't Hinckley!"


55, Broadway closing off one end of Queen Anne's Gate

For more on Charles Holden's masterpiece, 55, Broadway see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/give-my-regards-to-55-broadway.html