Pickering Place, tucked away behind the exclusive St James’s Street and Green Parkl in the heart of Westminster, is one of the city’s most historic and intriguing locations.
London is home to over 600 public squares and they vary significantly in size, but Pickering Place is actually the smallest public square in London. The space measures just 100 square yards (83.6 m2) and is surrounded by tall Georgian townhouses, some of which date back to the 18th century.
It’s hard to imagine a quieter spot in the midst of the bustling city, but Pickering Place is a tranquil oasis that offers an impressive glimpse into London’s past.
Among other things, Pickering Place has been the site of brothels, bear-baiting and duels in the past, but there are so many stories to tell about such a small space, that I don’t even know where to start…
Well let’s start with
Berry Brothers & Rudd
On one side of Pickering Place is the rear of the famous wine merchants Berry Brothers & Rudd.
The shop was founded in 1698 by the ‘Widow Bourne’ – her first name has been lost to history.
She established a grocery store here and specialised in selling coffee beans and ground coffee to the newly-fashionable coffee houses, which were rapidly growing in number in London.
In the early 1700s, the business shifted from coffee to selling wines and spirits, and the giant, cast-iron scales that had been used to weigh sacks of coffee beans became redundant.
Spirits And Wines On A Large Scale
A very astute commercial decision was made at this time to keep the scales and offer to weigh members of the public. This service attracted a lot of affluent customers and it became very fashionable to be weighed at Berry Brothers.
Name Dropping…
Starting in 1765, books were kept of names and weights. Members of the Royal Family, Lord Byron, William Pitt the Younger and many others have all been weighed at No 3 St James’s.
In 1808, two of the greatest and most celebrated boxers of their time, Crib and Belcher, used the store for the location of their official weigh-in before their fights.
Another famous and loyal customer of Berry Brothers & Rudd was the artist George Cruikshank (1792 – 1878), the eccentric early illustrator of Charles Dickens’ novels.
(In case you wonder, he is the brother of the above mentioned Robert Cruikshank)
He surely didn’t come to be weighted, though, I am talking more about the ‘wines and spirits’ part of the business…
It was said of him that :
“No man drank with more fervour and enjoyment, nor carried his liquor so kindly, so merrily”.
Until he turned 55 and embraced the temperance movement.
He then became a fierce advocate of sobriety, and campaigned for the rest of his life against alcohol abuse.
In the 1840s, he created a series of temperance-themed illustrations, one of which, ’The Worship of Bacchus’, was interestingly used as an advertisement for Berry Brothers & Rudd, who were promoting their non-alcoholic beverages at the time.
If you think that’s impressive, wait until you hear about ‘The Napoleon Cellar’.
When Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, his nephew Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled from France. For part of his exile, he lived in Westminster and became friends with George Berry.
He was concerned about his own security and used the cellars at No 3 St James’s to plan his return to power in France. He was eventually successful and became the first publicly elected President of the new (2nd) French Republic in 1848.
To commemorate this event, one of the cellars beneath the shop is called ’The Napoleon Cellar’, and can be hired for private functions, including wine tasting.
But that’s not all.
Berry Brothers & Rudd made another clever decision in the early 1900s when they decided to export the company’s brand of Scotch whisky, Cutty Sark, to the Bahamas, which was a well-known stopover for smugglers transporting liquor into the United States.
Nope. That one ??
Why smugglers?
Because we are right in the prohibition era in the United States, which lasted from 1920 to 1933, and the production, sale, and transportation of alcohol were banned.
Of course, the Prohibition led to an increase in illegal production and smuggling of alcoholic beverages, particularly from neighboring countries such as Canada and the Bahamas.
Berry Brothers’ decision turned out to be a smart business move, as Cutty Sark became popular among smugglers and consumers in the Bahamas.
The Company’s reputation for quality products helped them to establish a foothold in the US market, despite the challenges of the Prohibition, and Cutty Sark is still to this day one of the most well-known brands of Scotch whisky all around the world.
A Texas Embassy?
But there is another link between Pickering place and ‘’The other side of the Pond’’, which is commemorated by a plaque at the entrance of the narrow passage leading into Pickering place :
A legation is a diplomatic mission a bit less formal than an official diplomatic embassy.
The state of Texas in the USA has a long and complex history and has existed under six different flags:
it has been part of France, Spain and Mexico; it has been an independent republic from 1836 to 1846 with its own president (hence the nickname the ‘Lone Star State’); it was one of the Southern Confederate States during the American Civil War; and it is now the 28th state of the USA.
When it was an independent country, its president, Sam Houston, opened legations in Washington DC, Paris and London.
The Texan legation occupied the rooms above No 3 St James’s for about ten years in the mid-1800s, and the plaque was erected by the Anglo-Texan Society, whose first President was the author Graham Greene.
Paul
