The Gentlemen’s Clubs of St. James: Victorian London’s Prestigious Location
Online Walking Tour
While it is said that London is one of the more unplanned of great world cities and there is less “grand design” in its growth, little happened completely by accident. For example, the concentration of the gentlemen’s clubs in the small area around St. James, and their explosive growth in the latter half of the 19th century was not a historical or geographical accident.
On this live virtual walk, accredited City of London and City of Westminster Tour Guide, Mark Rowland, will lead us to many of the remaining clubs on the route and discuss the influences on their growth and decline: the birth and growth of Empire and the Industrial Revolution; the Victorian social mores that had to be overcome by ambitious young men; the upheavals (and fire) that changed the political landscape forever; and the sheer bombast of the age that created some of the finest Neo-classical buildings in London.
Mark will discuss how the location was the most important feature of the clubs and explain why they sprang up where they did, and how a combination of their own ever-reaching ambitions and the growth of transport and communications technology led to a decline during the following centuries.
