St James’s - The Rough Guide to London - page 69

by the Elgin Marbles, which had just arrived in London. The Duke of Wellington was
a regular at the United Services Club, and the horse blocks - confusingly positioned
outside the Athenaeum - were designed so the duke could mount his steed more easily.
Appropriately enough, an equestrian statue of that eminently clubbable man Edward
VII stands between the two clubs. More statues line the railings of nearby Waterloo
Gardens: Captain Scott was sculpted by the widow he left behind after failing to
complete the return journey from the South Pole; New Zealander Keith Park , the
World War I flying ace and RAF commander who organized the fighter defence of
London and southeast England during the Battle of Britain, was erected in 2010. 2

Duke of York's Column
To the south of Waterloo Place, overlooking St James's Park, is the Duke of York's
Column , erected in 1833, ten years before Nelson's more famous one. The “Grand Old
Duke of York”, second son of George III, is indeed the one who marched ten thousand
men “up to the top of the hill and…marched them down again” in the famous nursery
rhyme. The 123ft column was paid for by stopping one day's wages of every soldier in
the British Army, and it was said at the time that the column was so high because the
duke was trying to escape his creditors, since he died £2 million in debt.

Carlton House Terrace
Having pulled his old palace down, George IV had Nash build Carlton House Terrace ,
whose monumental facade now looks out onto St James's Park. No. 4, by the exquisitely
tranquil Carlton Gardens, was handed to de Gaulle for the headquarters of the Free
French during World War II; nos. 7-9, by the Duke of York steps, served as the German
embassy until World War II. Albert Speer designed the interior under the Nazis, while
outside a tiny grave for ein treuer Begleiter (a true friend) lurks behind the railings near
the column - it holds the remains of Giro , the Nazi ambassador's pet Alsatian,
accidentally electrocuted in February 1934.

St James's Square
Around the time of George III's birth at no. 31 in 1738, St James's Square boasted
no fewer than six dukes and seven earls, and over the decades it has maintained its
exclusive air: no. 10 was occupied in turn by prime ministers Pitt the Elder, Lord
Derby and Gladstone; at no. 16 you'll find the silliest-sounding gentlemen's club, the
East India, Devonshire, Sports and Public Schools' Club; no. 4 was home to Nancy
Astor, the first woman MP to take her seat in parliament, in 1919; while no. 31 was
where Eisenhower formed the first Allied HQ during World War II. The narrowest
house on the square (no. 14) is the London Library , a private library founded in 1841
by Thomas Carlyle, who got sick of waiting up to two hours for books to be retrieved
from the British Library shelves only to find he couldn't borrow them (he used to
steal them instead).
The square is no longer residential and, architecturally, it's not quite the period piece it
once was, but its proportions remain intact, as do the central gardens , which feature an
equestrian statue of William III , depicted tripping over on the molehill that killed him at
Hampton Court. In the northeastern corner, there's a memorial marking the spot where
police o cer Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead in 1984, during a demonstration by Libyan
dissidents outside what was then the Libyan embassy, at no. 5. Following the shooting,
the embassy was besieged by armed police for eleven days, but in the end the diplomats
were simply expelled and no one has ever been charged.

Schomberg House
80-82 Pall Mall
The unusual seventeenth-century mansion of Schomberg House is one of the few to
stand out on Pall Mall, thanks to its Dutch-style red brickwork and elongated