St. James's Square

With Cleveland House comes the key to St. James's Square under a unique Statute nearly 300 years old.

During the English Civil War, shortly before the execution of Charles 1, the queen fled across the Channel escorted by one of her favourite courtiers, Henry Jermyn. In Paris, "Harry" became an intimate confidante of the widowed queen. When her son, Charles ll, returned from exile he rewarded Jermyn by making him the first Earl of St. Albans and, in 1665, handing him the freehold of 22 acres of pasture known as St. James's Field.

The Earl had an ambition to create a fashionable Court suburb between Westminster and the Palace of St. James, with a great residential square at its heart. Influenced by the Place Royale in Paris and the Piazza in Covent Garden, he sold plots to fellow aristocrats and to speculative builders. Twenty three fine houses had been erected by the end of the 17th century. Behind their dignified facades, the social life of the time was pursued in opulent splendour.

In 1726, following a petition by the influential residents, the Square was placed in their hands as trustees by a private Act of Parliament, the first of its kind to regulate a London square and the only one to remain in operation, unamended to the present day.