London is very good at hiding things in plain sight. Entire alleys vanish between shopfronts. Courtyards sit behind blank doors. Centuries of scandal, money and bad decisions are tucked away behind polished brass plates. Pickering Place, in St James’s, is one of the finest examples: a tiny Georgian courtyard squeezed behind 3 St James’s Street, easy to miss unless you already know it is there.
It is officially recognised as London’s smallest public square — though “square” feels almost too grand a word for it. Pickering Place is tiny: more a courtyard than a conventional square, and so compact that exact published measurements are surprisingly hard to pin down. It feels less like a civic space than a room the city forgot to put a roof on. You reach it through a narrow passage beside Berry Bros. & Rudd, the historic wine merchant, and emerge into a small paved courtyard of Georgian brick, iron railings, old lamps and improbable quiet. A few steps from the traffic and clubs of St James’s Street, the city seems to fold in on itself.
The entrance is part of the pleasure. St James’s Street has never been shy about wealth. It runs between Piccadilly and Pall Mall, with St James’s Palace at the southern end, and has long been associated with gentlemen’s clubs, royal suppliers, smart shops and the sort of London where people say “one must” without irony. Pickering Place, by contrast, feels like a secret the area forgot to keep properly.
Its story is closely tied to Berry Bros. & Rudd, which has operated from No. 3 St James’s Street since 1698. The business began not as a wine merchant but as a grocer’s and coffee house founded by the Widow Bourne. In the eighteenth century, William Pickering, her son-in-law, developed the small court behind the shop. It was originally known as Pickering Court before later becoming Pickering Place. The name stayed, even as the business on the street frontage evolved into one of Britain’s best-known wine merchants.
For somewhere so small, Pickering Place has collected a ridiculous quantity of history. It has been linked with gambling dens, bare-knuckle seediness, cockfighting and other less fragrant amusements of old London. St James’s may now smell of polished wood, expensive aftershave and institutional confidence, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it had plenty of shadows. Pickering Place, hidden yet central, was just the sort of tucked-away spot where respectable London and disreputable London could shake hands after midnight.
One of its most repeated claims is that it was the site of the last duel in London. As with many London legends, the details can be slippery, but the story suits the place beautifully. You can see why duelists might have liked it: secluded enough for trouble, close enough to power, and with exits narrow enough to make everyone feel briefly theatrical. It is not hard to imagine two furious gentlemen standing there at dawn, honour wounded, pistols raised, both secretly hoping someone else would call the whole thing off.
Pickering Place also has a surprising international footnote. It was once home to the legation of the Republic of Texas, before Texas joined the United States in 1845. A plaque near the entrance marks this strange little link between a hidden London courtyard and the brief, swaggering life of an independent Texas. London does this sort of thing constantly: one moment you are looking for a wine shop, the next you are standing in a diplomatic ghost story.
Part of the charm of Pickering Place is that there is not much to do there. That sounds like an insult, but it is not. Some London places are at their best when they ask very little of you. You step in, look around, notice the scale of it, admire the brickwork, wonder how many people walk past each day without seeing it, then step back out into St James’s Street slightly altered. It is a pocket of London, not an attraction with elbows.
The courtyard’s smallness is the point. London’s grand squares — Grosvenor, Berkeley, Russell, Trafalgar — announce themselves. Pickering Place barely clears its throat. Yet it carries the city’s history in miniature: commerce, class, scandal, architecture, empire, alcohol, violence, secrecy and the eternal London talent for turning a back yard into a legend.
For visitors, it is best combined with a wander around St James’s. You can see St James’s Palace, stroll down Pall Mall, peer at the old clubs, or continue towards Green Park. But Pickering Place is the thing to look for if you enjoy the London that slips between the guidebook paragraphs. It is small, yes. Almost absurdly small. But it has the density of a cabinet of curiosities.
In a city that often confuses size with importance, Pickering Place makes a neat little argument for the opposite. Sometimes the most interesting places are not the ones shouting from the main road. Sometimes they are down a passageway, behind a wine merchant, waiting patiently in brick and shadow.