‘Not so much a residence as a tradition’

The evolution of St James’s Palace from leper hospital to royal court

Buckingham Palace has been the main London residence of the British monarch since 1837, when Queen Victoria chose it as her base, but St James’s Palace remains the official seat of the sovereign, as it has since 1698. Newly appointed ambassadors, therefore, are accredited to ‘the Court of St James’s’, and it is from there that the public proclamation of a new sovereign is first read. Despite this, a comprehensive account of the 800-year history of this royal palace has only just been published, as Chris Catling reports.

The eyes of the world were on St James’s Palace on 10 September 2022 when David White, Garter King of Arms, read the Accession Proclamation formally announcing the succession of King Charles III following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. If royal palace expert Simon Thurley had been watching or listening, he might well have been frustrated to hear the BBC commentators say repeatedly that ‘very little is known about the history of the palace’. In fact, Simon and his two co-authors, Rufus Bird and Michael Turner, had completed a new history of the palace based on primary sources and a study of the surviving building fabric, some three years previously.

Following on from the monograph on Windsor Castle (see CA 341), this was intended to be the second of a series of comprehensive new histories of the occupied royal palaces to be published by the Royal Collection Trust (RCT). The Trust, however, is entirely dependent on the income from visitors to the palaces, and when the pandemic struck, the book had to be put on ice. Now Yale University Press has stepped in to publish the work in association with the RCT. We can at last make sense of what Simon Thurley calls ‘a mysterious and confusing place’ and which HRH The Prince of Wales (now King Charles III) describes in the foreword to the new history as ‘the least well-known of all the official royal residences’.

Leprosy to luxury

The palace has its origins in the Hospital of St James, which was possibly established in the late 12th or early 13th century to house up to 16 women with leprosy, one of whom served as the prioress. They, and the Augustinian priests who ministered to the community, dedicated their lives to saying prayers for the souls of the hospital’s wealthy benefactors. Such communities had to remain isolated from the rest of the population, and the site for the new hospital was chosen with that in mind. It was built on the lower of two gravel terraces (Piccadilly now runs along the upper terrace, with Pall Mall on the lower one) in an undeveloped and rural part of the lower Thames Valley. A branch of the River Tyburn flowed through the site, providing a source of water needed for the relief of skin conditions.

This might seem like a humble origin for what became a palace, but this was a royal foundation within the jurisdiction of Westminster Abbey, which means that useful records have survived in the abbey’s archives. These show that the master, brothers, and sisters of St James’s were censured several times for their laxity, immorality, and the neglect of their assets. In the 1320s, for instance, their lands were described as uncultivated, their rents dilapidated, and the roof of their church caved in. John de Sydenham was appointed as a reforming master in 1331, and the work he carried out, detailed in the abbey accounts, provides our earliest record of the hospital’s appearance.

In 1332-1333, the walls and gatehouse surrounding the hospital were renewed and a new hall was begun for the brothers: built of stone, with chalk foundations, roofed with tiles, painted within, and containing a pulpit from which Psalms could be read at mealtimes. Next to the hall was a chamber furnished with a heavy lock and lead-lined shutters. A covered walkway led from the hall to a new kitchen, also of stone, with a tiled roof and containing a fireplace and oven. Water was supplied to this, and to a washing place in the hall, by brass pipes, and next to the kitchen were two ‘solars’, or private rooms.

In 1333-1334, the brothers acquired a new bakehouse and the sisters a new stone hall, entered by a porch and with three windows. The adjoining kitchen was furnished with a new oven, fireplace, and lead vat. New gutters were made for the infirmary building, which stood beside the sisters’ hall. These buildings – together with a mill, dovecote, barns, a walled vineyard, and other structures – give the impression of a comfortable residence. In addition, the brothers’ dormitory was divided into individual rooms with beds, while the great hall was fitted with a lavabo, fireplace, and chimney.

The Crown claimed the hospital as a royal foundation and asserted its right to appoint the master over the rival claims of the abbey, and from 1340 the mastership became a royal sinecure. Masters appointed by successive monarchs treated the hospital as a comfortable residence conveniently close to the royal court at Westminster, one of many perks enjoyed as a result of a close personal relationship with the sovereign. Religious observance continued, though the female inhabitants by now were no longer needy sufferers of leprosy, but wealthy widows.

A 15th-century document describes the hospital as having a main house, with tower, hall, chamber, and parlour, surrounded by a garden and orchard. It is probable that this, the most prestigious part of the complex, formed an inner court on the southern part, with an outer court to the north and a gatehouse on what is now Pall Mall. The sisters’ house lay to the west, while the church and churchyard, with an inner and an outer cemetery, lay to the east. The long buttressed north wall of the church was found by workmen in 1925, along with late 13th-century encaustic tiles and five burials. The outer court also contained what were described as the ‘houses of husbandry’ – a barn and a granary – joined by a ‘longhouse’, plus a dovecote, and, somewhere nearby, a mill. There was a kitchen garden, too, and a herb garden.

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This is an extract of an article that appeared in CA 394. Read on in the magazine or on our new website, The Past (click here to subscribe), which details of all the content of the magazine. At The Past you will be able to read each article in full as well as the content of our other magazines, Current World Archaeology, Minerva, and Military History Matters.