Parish of St James' Piccadilly

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Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of London with an overview of the parish of St James' Piccadilly:

Returning from Soho Square to Piccadilly Circus, we find ourselves in the parish of St. James's, Piccadilly, which takes in all the now fashionable shopping locality of Regent Street, and is bounded on the east and south by St. Anne's, Soho, and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and on the west by St. George's, Hanover Square.

St. James's parish was separated from St. Martin's in 1685, but before that epoch it had begun to have an existence of its own.

Faithorne and Newcourt's map of London, 1658, shows us open ground from a double row of trees at Pall Mall to Piccadilly; Piccadilly is marked "from Knightsbridge unto Piccadilly Hall."

Opposite the palace, at the foot of the present St. James's Street, are a few houses, including Berkshire (now Bridgewater) House, and there are a few more at the eastern extremity of Pall Mall.

At the north-eastern corner of what we call the Haymarket is the "Gaming House," and at the corners adjacent one or two more buildings.

This is St. James's in its earliest stage, before the tide of fashion had moved so far westward.

Henry Jermyn, Earl of St Albans, in the reign of Charles II obtained a building lease of forty-five acres in St. James's Fields and projected the square, which became the nucleus of the parish.

Next: Origin of the name Piccadilly