St James’s Gardens is an attractive garden square with St James Church in the middle of the communal garden.
The houses surrounding the square were built as a series of pairs of semi-detached houses linked by shared entrances. Most of the houses are part brick and part stucco faced. Speculative developer Charles Richardson built the houses and established the gardens for the residents, part of the Norland Estate.
Richardson donated the site for St James’s Church to the Church Commissioners with the thought that the houses would sell better if they had access to their own church.
Work began on St James’s Church in 1844 to designs by Lewis Vulliamy. The church was consecrated in 1845 but it was a further five years before the tower was built and there was never enough money from residents’ contributions to erect the planned spire.
John Barnett designed the houses. It was called St James’s Square at the time. By this period individuals were getting together as “building societies” to invest in property development. Charles Richardson and his brother were heavily involved in setting up the St James’s Square Benefit Building Society, which became the main source of finance for the construction of the houses in St James’s Square.
The first house to be built were Nos. 1-8, a terrace on the southern side of the square, west of the Addison Avenue junction. These were built in 1847. Nos. 9-13, which took up the western end of the square, were built in 1848. In 1849 work began on the long north side, with a terrace comprising Nos. 14-24. In 1850 work resumed on the south side, east of the Addison Avenue junction, with Nos. 47-54. Finally, Nos. 42-46 were built on the eastern side of the Square in 1851. That still left a considerable part of the north side still to be constructed, but work did not start there again for another 15 years.
David Nicholson and Son, builders from Wandsworth, were the principal contractors. They built Nos. 47-54, 14-24, and 42-46, and they also completed some of the houses started by Robert Adkin, a local builder, who started Nos. 9-13 and then went bust.
Nos. 55 and 56 were built by George Drew in 1865. These were three-storey houses and they were built in linked pairs. The lower parts of the houses are stuccoed with bare brick on the upper floors. The windows and doors at ground floor level have a semi-circular heads. In the upper floors the windows are square headed. The common motif of the houses is an elaborate cornice along the top of each house, which is echoed in the cornice above the top of the first floor.
The private communal gardens are laid out in an informal woodland style. Chestnut and lime trees, dating back to the 19th century, dominate it.
