Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for JAMES (ST.) WESTMINSTER

JAMES (ST.) WESTMINSTER, a parish and a district in Middlesex. The parish forms all a compact portion of the metropolis; lies 1¾ mile W by S of St. Pauls; includes St. James' square, Golden square, Pall Mall, Piccadilly to Burlington arcade, Regent street to the Circus, and numerous fashionable, airy, or well built streets and places; has near and ready access to railway communication with all parts of the kingdom; and contains many post offices‡ and postal letter boxes under London W and London SW. St. James' palace and St James' park are not in this parish, but in that of St. Martin-in-theFields. St. James' square is in the SW part of the parish; was built in 1674-90; has, in the centre, an equestrian statue of William III., by the Bacons, erected in 1808; and includes, among the edifices on its sides, the London library, the Statistical Society's house, the Wyndham club, the Army and Navy club, the East India Club, the London and Westminster Bank, the house inhabited by the late Lord Castlereagh, Lichfield-House, the houses of the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Winchester, the Duke of Marlborough, the Countess Cowper, Lord Egerton, Sir Watkin W. Wynne, Viscount Falmouth, the Earl of Derby, the Marquis of Bristol, and the Duke of Cleveland, and Norfolk House, in which George III. was born. Pall Mall goes from the foot of Haymarket west-south-westward past the S side of St. James' square, to the foot of St. James'street; took its name from a game introduced to England in the time of Charles I., or perhaps in that of James I.; was the first street in London lighted with gas, and was first lighted with it on 28 Jan., 1807; and includes, among its houses, the United Service club, the Athenæum club, the Travellers' club, the Reform club, the Carlton club, Schomberg House, the site of Nell Gwynn's house, the Oxford and Cambridge club, the British Institution, the Guards' club, and Marlborough House, the death place of the great Duke of Marlborough, and the residence of the Prince of Wales. St. James' street goes from Pall Mall, north-north-westward, to Piccadilly; was the scene of Blood's attempt on the Duke of Ormond; and includes Brooks' club, the Conservative club, three other clubs, the house in which Lord Byron lodged in 1811, and the sites of the houses in which Sir Richard Steele lived and the historian Gibbon died. St. James' place, off the W side of St. James' street, contains Spencer House, the house of the late Rogers the poet, and other mansions overlooking the Green Park. St. James' Hall, in Piccadilly, was built in 1858, for musicalperformances for the W end of London; contains two halls on the ground floor, the one 60 feet by 60, the other 60 feet by 55; has a great hall on the first floor, 136 feet long, 60 wide, and 60 high; and is decorated, especially on the roof, in a chastely beautiful style. Other objects and places of interest will be noticed in our article WESTMINSTER. Acres of the parish, 164. Real property, in 1860, £502, 060. Pop. in 1851, 36, 406; in 1861, 35, 326. Houses, 3, 333. The decrease of pop. was caused partly by the conversion of private houses into warehouses or workshops, and partly by the removal of shop keepers with their families to reside in the suburbs away from their places of business. A detached plot, comprising a burial ground and chapel, lies isolated within the parish of St. Pancras.

The parish was formed, in 1685, out of St. Martin-inthe-Fields; it is now ecclesiastically divided into four sections, St. James, St. Luke, St. Peter, and St. John the Baptist; and it contains four other charges, without defined limits, St. James' Chapel, Archbishop Tenison's Chapel, and St. Philip. Pop., of St. James ecclesiastically, 15, 957; of St. Luke, 9, 039; of St. Peter, 5, 330; of St. John the Baptist, 5, 000. St. James is a rectory, St. Luke a vicarage, the others p. curacies, in the diocese of London. Value of St. James, £1, 160;* of St. Luke, £300; of St. Peter, £250; of St. John-the-Baptist, £150; of the others, not recorded. Patron of St. James, alternately the Crown and the Bishop of London; of Archbishop Tenison's Chapel, the Rector of St. James and Trustees; of each of the others, the Rector of St. James The places of worship within the parish, in 1851, were 7 of the Church of England, with 5, 364 sittings; 1 of the Church of Scotland, with 784 s.; 1 of Independents, with 1, 700 s.; 1 of Wesleyans, with 303 s.; 1 of Lutherans, with 50 attendants; 1 of Italian Reformers, with 150 sittings; 1 of Roman Catholics, with 680 s.; and 1 of Jews, with 462 s. St. James' church stands in Piccadilly; was built in 1682-4, by Sir Christopher Wren, at the expense of Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans; shows an ungainly exterior of red brick with stone quoins, surmounted by a spire 149 feet high; has a symmetrical, airy, and elegant interior; and contains a carved marble font by Grinling Gibbons, a beautiful altarpiece by the same artist, a very fine organ made for James II., and a painted E window erected in 1846. The vestry contains interesting portraits of the rectors, among which are that of Samuel Clarke, the theological author, and those of Tenison and Wake, afterwards-archbishops of Canterbury. The register records the baptisms of the polite Earl of Chesterfield, the great Earl of Chatham, and the late Princess Charlotte. The churchyard contains the graves or monuments of Cotton, the associate of Izaak Walton; Sydenham, the physician; Vandervelde, the painter; D'Urfey, the dramatist; Henry Sydney, Earl of Romney: Arbuthnot, the friend of Pope and Swift; Akenside, the poet; Gillray, the caricaturist; and Sir John Malcolm, the soldier and diplomatist. St. Luke's church stands in Berwick street; was built in 1838-40, after designs by Blore, at a cost of £14, 000; is in the pointed style; and contains about 1, 000 sittings. St. Philip's church stands in Regentstreet; was built in 1809-20, after designs by Repton, at a cost of £15, 000; measures 70 feet each way; and has a tower after the model of the lantern of Demosthenes. The schools within the parish, in 1851, were 9 public day schools, with 2, 056 scholars; 22 private day schools, with 639 s.; 4 Sunday schools, with 1, 000 s.; and 3 evening schools for adults, with 32 s.

The district, or poor law union, is conterminate with the parish; is administered under a local act; and is diVided into the sub-districts of Berwick-Street, GoldenSquare, and St. James'-Square. The Berwick-Street sub-district lies eastward of a line drawn from the N end of Poland-street, along the middle of that street, across Broad street, and along the middle of Little Windmillstreet and Great Windmill street, as far as Coventrystreet. Acres, 25. Pop., 10, 607. Houses, 768. The Golden Square sub-district is bounded, on the N and the W, by the parishes of St. George-Hanover-square and St. Marylebone; on the S, by a line drawn westward along the middle of Brewer street from Windmill streets, and along the middle of Glasshouse street, Vigo street, in front of the N end of the Albany, and in front of the houses on the N side of Burlington Gardens, till it strikes the parochial boundary. Acres, 54. Pop., 13, 966. Houses, 1, 181. The St. James' Square sub-district comprises all the rest of the parish. Acres, 85. Pop., 10, 753. Houses, 1, 384. Poor rates of the district in 1863, £40, 739. Marriages in 1863, 411; births, 906, - of which 73 were illegitimate; deaths, 778, -of which 326 were at ages under 5 years, and 11 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 3, 874; births, 9, 383; deaths, 7, 708. The workhouse is in Golden-Square subdistrict; and, at the census of 1861, had 565 inmates.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a parish and a district"   (ADL Feature Type: "countries, 4th order divisions")
Administrative units: Middlesex AncC
Place: St James

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