St. James's Park

About St. James's Park

Royal Park in central London

St James's Park is the oldest of London's Royal Parks, 23 hectares in the City of Westminster between Buckingham Palace to the west and Horse Guards and Whitehall to the east, bounded by the ceremonial Mall to the north and Birdcage Walk to the south. It takes its name from a medieval leper hospital dedicated to St James that stood where St James's Palace now is, and was first enclosed by Henry VIII in the 1530s as a deer park beside the Palace of Whitehall. It is the eastern link in the near-continuous chain of parks that runs through Green Park, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, the green lung of central London, and is Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. Charles II relaid it in the French style in the 17th century and opened it to the public, and in the 1820s John Nash gave it its present romantic form with a winding lake and curving paths. The long lake at its heart holds two islands and is home to flocks of ducks, geese and swans, and famously to pelicans, presented to the park ever since the Russian ambassador gave the first in 1664 and fed every afternoon. From the Blue Bridge across the lake comes one of London's most celebrated views: Buckingham Palace one way and, the other, the towers of Whitehall, the domes of Horse Guards and the London Eye rising above the trees. With The Mall, the park is the setting for royal processions and national occasions, and it is the natural walking route from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace.

Where:

London, United Kingdom