Pall Mall, London
Pall Mall /ˌpæl ˈmæl/ is a street in the St James's area of the City of Westminster, Central London. It connects St James's Street to Trafalgar Square and is a section of the regional A4 road. The street's name is derived from pall-mall, a ball game played there during the 17th century, which in turn is derived from the Italian pallamaglio, literally "ball-mallet".
This article is about the London street. For other uses, see Pall Mall (disambiguation).
The area was built up during the reign of Charles II with fashionable London residences. It is known for high-class shopping in the 18th century until the present, and gentlemen's clubs in the 19th. The Reform, Athenaeum and Travellers Clubs have survived to the 21st century. The War Office was based on Pall Mall during the second half of the 19th century, and the Royal Automobile Club's headquarters have been on the street since 1908.
Geography[edit]
The street is around 0.4 miles (0.6 km) long and runs east in the St James's area, from St James's Street across Waterloo Place, to the Haymarket and continues as Pall Mall East towards Trafalgar Square. The street numbers run consecutively from north-side east to west and then continue on the south-side west to east. It is nominally part of the A4, a major road running west from Central London,[1] but is not used as a through road.
History and topography[edit]
Early history and pall-mall field[edit]
Pall Mall was constructed in 1661, replacing an earlier highway slightly to the south that ran from the Haymarket (approximately where Warwick House Street is now) to the royal residence, St James's Palace.[2] Historical research suggests a road had been in this location since Saxon times, although the earliest documentary references are from the 12th century in connection with a leper colony at St James's Hospital. When St. James's Park was laid out by order of Henry VIII in the 16th century, the park's boundary wall was built along the south side of the road.[a] In 1620, the Privy Council ordered the High Sheriff of Middlesex to clear a number of temporary buildings next to the wall that were of poor quality.[3]
Pall-mall, a ball game similar to croquet, was introduced to England in the early 17th century by James I. The game, already popular in France and Scotland, was enjoyed by James' sons Henry and Charles.[4] In 1630, St James's Field, London's first pall-mall court, was laid out to the north of the Haymarket – St James road.[5]
After the Restoration and King Charles II's return to London on 29 May 1660, another pall-mall court was constructed in St James's Park just south of the wall, on the site of The Mall.[3] Samuel Pepys's diary entry for 2 April 1661 records: "[I] went into St. James's Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at Pelemele, the first time that I ever saw the sport".[6] This new court suffered from dust blown over the wall from coaches travelling along the highway. In July 1661 posts and rails were erected, stopping up the old road.[3] The court for pall-mall was very long and narrow, and often known as an alley, so the old court, namely St James's Field, provided a suitable route for relocating the eastern approach to St James's Palace. A grant was made to Dan O'Neale, Groom of the Bedchamber, and John Denham, Surveyor of the King's Works, allocating a 1,400-by-23-foot (427 by 7 m) area of land for this purpose. The grant was endorsed 'Our warrant for the building of the new street to St James's'.[5]
A new road was built on the site of the old pall-mall court, and opened in September 1661.[3] It was named Catherine Street, after Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, but was better known as Pall Mall Street or the Old Pall Mall.[5][7][b] The pall-mall field was a popular place for recreation, and Pepys records several other visits. By July 1665 Pepys used "Pell Mell" to refer to the street as well as the game.[9][c]
Cultural references[edit]
Giacomo Casanova lived in Pall Mall during 1761 as "Chevalier de Seingalt" and documented the stay in his memoirs.[31] When the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray visited Dublin in 1845, he compared Pall Mall to O'Connell Street (then known as Upper Sackville Street).[32] In 1870, Henry Benjamin Wheatley wrote "Round about Piccadilly and Pall Mall", documenting changes in and around the street over the century.[33] A compilation of Oscar Wilde's works, A Critic in Pall Mall : Being Extracts From Reviews And Miscellanies, was published in 1919, comprising essays he wrote for newspapers and journals from the 1870s to the 1890s.[34]
Pall Mall is the location of the fictional Diogenes Club in the Sherlock Holmes stories, written by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Princess Elizabeth mentioned Pall Mall in her diary on celebrations on VE day: "Out in crowd again," she wrote, "Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly, Pall Mall, walked simply miles. Saw parents on balcony at 12.30 am – ate, partied, bed 3am!"[35]
Pall Mall is part of a group of three squares on the British Monopoly board game, alongside Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue. All three streets converge at Trafalgar Square.[36] Rising house prices across London mean a small flat on Pall Mall, which is in the lowest-priced third of properties on the board, now sells for over £1 million.
[37]
Charles Lamb, in his essay "The Superannuated Man," also mentioned this place. The narrator of the essay confesses that he used to "indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. As the narrator is a superannuated man, he has ample time to spend. Among the means of spending time and enjoying his life is frequently visiting the club houses in Pall Mall, which gave him immense pleasure.