Pall Mall, London

• 1. Introduction

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  Pall Mall takes its name from a ball game, and on the 2nd of April 1661, Samuel Pepys was there to see that game played. He found the Duke of York batting a wooden ball along a narrow court in St James's Park. Pepys noted in his diary that it was "the first time that I ever saw the sport." The game was called Pelemele, played with a mallet along a long, narrow alley. That alley had been built for Charles II on his return from exile the previous year. Coaches on the road beside the park kicked up so much dust that the court became unplayable. Within months, the alley was closed and a new street opened across its old footprint.

• 2. The Pall-Mall Game

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  James I brought pall-mall to England in the early 17th century, from France and Scotland where it was already fashionable. His sons Henry and Charles both became devoted players. In 1630, St James's Field became London's first dedicated court, laid out north of the road connecting the Haymarket with St James's Palace.

  In July 1661, posts and rails were put up across the old road beside the park, closing it permanently. St James's Field, the original court, offered a natural alignment for the new street. A grant was issued to Dan O'Neale, Groom of the Bedchamber, and John Denham, Surveyor of the King's Works. Their allotted plot measured 1,400 by 23 feet.

  Charles II named the new road Catherine Street in September 1661, honouring his wife Catherine of Braganza. The name rarely caught on. Most Londoners called it Pall Mall Street or the Old Pall Mall. By July 1665, Pepys himself was writing "Pell Mell" to mean the street, not the game. In 1662, the London and Westminster Streets Act listed the road among those "thought fitt immediately to be repaired, new paved or otherwise amended."

• 3. The Great Development

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  Martha Barker held the Crown lease on the real tennis court at the northeast corner of Pall Mall and St James's Street. In 1664, she was notified that the structure was to come down. The paving commissioners established under the 1662 Act offered £230 in compensation. She initially refused. The court was gone by 1679.

  The Earl of St Albans held a Crown lease from 1662 on 45 acres of the former St James's Fields. He used it to plan an entire new quarter: St James's Square, Jermyn Street, Charles Street, St Albans Street, King Street and others. On the 1st of April 1665, Charles II granted the Earl the freehold of the St James's Square site. The grant also covered the north side of Pall Mall between St James's Street and the square's eastern edge.

  Charles II kept Crown ownership of the south side of the street and enforced stricter building standards there. The result was a grander row of properties facing the north. One exception was No. 79, granted to Nell Gwyn's trustees in 1676 or 1677. The 18th-century bookseller Andrew Millar lived at No. 34, in a townhouse designed by Robert Adam. John, second Earl of Egmont, rebuilt No. 104 in 1761-2. Sir John Soane remodelled the same house in 1793-4 for Lady Louisa Manners, Countess of Dysart. She remained at No. 104 until 1831, when the property passed into use as storage and display for the Royal picture collection.

• 4. Commerce and Gas Light

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  The Vulliamy family sold clocks at No. 68 Pall Mall for nearly ninety years, from 1765 to 1854. Robert Dodsley ran a bookshop at No. 52, and it was there that he proposed the idea of a comprehensive English dictionary to Samuel Johnson. Richard Cosway and Thomas Gainsborough both lived at Schomberg House, at Nos. 80-82, as the street drew London's artists and writers.

  Frederick Albert Winsor chose Pall Mall for an experiment on the 4th of June 1807. To mark King George III's birthday, he lit a stretch of the street using gas lamps. No other street in London had been illuminated this way before. Permanent gas lighting followed in 1820.

  Between 1814 and 1818, the eastern end of Pall Mall was widened. A row of houses on the north side was demolished to make way for the Royal Opera Arcade. In 1824, the Royal Academy, the National Gallery, and Christie's auction house were all simultaneously based on Pall Mall.

• 5. The Age of Clubs

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  The Travellers Club was founded in 1819 and first settled at No. 49 Pall Mall, moving to No. 106 in 1822. Charles Barry designed the current premises, completed in 1823. The Athenaeum Club arrived at No. 107 in 1830, relocating from tenements in Somerset House. It named itself after the Athenaeum in Rome, a university founded by the Emperor Hadrian. Decimus Burton designed its entrance hall.

  The Reform Club at Nos. 104-105 was established in 1836 for British Radicals. The Army and Navy Club at Nos. 36-39 followed in 1837. The Duke of Wellington suggested that name, wanting Royal Navy officers to feel as welcome as Army ones. Other clubs on the street included the United Service Club and the Oxford and Cambridge Club. Of these 19th-century clubs, the Reform, the Athenaeum, and the Travellers have all survived into the 21st century.

  Edwin Lutyens designed the former Midland Bank branch at Nos. 69-70, constructed between 1922 and 1927. Rothmans maintained its head office at No. 65, in a building designed by Norman Shaw. The Institute of Directors, founded in 1903 and awarded a royal charter in 1906, now occupies the former United Service Club premises on the street.

• 6. Royalty and State Power

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  Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, laid the foundation stone of Marlborough House in 1709. The building was complete by 1711. It sat just south of Pall Mall, off a courtyard beside St James's Palace. The Crown regained ownership in 1817. The future King George V was born at Marlborough House in 1865. He later lived there briefly as Prince of Wales during Edward VII's reign. The house became government property in 1959 and now holds the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation.

  Carlton House, at the eastern end of Pall Mall, was built in 1732 for Frederick, Prince of Wales. His widow, Princess Augusta, later inhabited it. On the 19th of June 1811, a ball was held at Carlton House to celebrate the start of the Prince Regent's regency. The Prince chose not to remain in the house after ascending the throne. John Nash replaced it with Carlton House Terrace, built between 1827 and 1832.

  Pall Mall served as the home of the War Office from 1855 to 1906. The office occupied a complex of buildings centred on Cumberland House, the former ducal mansion. The association became so strong that Pall Mall functioned as a synonym for the War Office, much as Whitehall came to stand for civil government. In 1902, a first-floor room at No. 7 was hired out for viewing Edward VII's coronation procession. The procession was cancelled when the king fell ill. The resulting legal dispute, Chandler v Webster, became a notable case on frustrated contracts.

• 7. Cultural Echoes

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  Giacomo Casanova lived on Pall Mall in 1761, calling himself "Chevalier de Seingalt," and described the stay in his memoirs. William Makepeace Thackeray, visiting Dublin in 1845, compared O'Connell Street (then known as Upper Sackville Street) to Pall Mall. Henry Benjamin Wheatley published "Round about Piccadilly and Pall Mall" in 1870, tracing decades of change along the street.

  Oscar Wilde's reviews and essays from the 1870s to the 1890s were gathered and published in 1919. The volume was titled "A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts From Reviews And Miscellanies." Princess Elizabeth mentioned Pall Mall by name in her VE Day diary. She wrote of walking through the crowds from Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly, passing through Pall Mall. Her parents appeared on the balcony at half past midnight. She was in bed by three in the morning.

  Charles Lamb, in his essay "The Superannuated Man," wrote of a narrator who once used to "indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall." That narrator found great pleasure visiting the street's club houses in retirement. Pall Mall sits on the British Monopoly board at the lower-priced end, alongside Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue. All three converge at Trafalgar Square. A small flat on Pall Mall now sells for over one million pounds.