St James's Arrivals: Clubland, Pall Mall and the Mall

A quarter built around institutions

St James's runs from Piccadilly down to the Mall and from Haymarket across to Green Park. Within that small rectangle sit private clubs, galleries, auction rooms, gentlemen's outfitters and a dense concentration of offices. The street pattern is Georgian and largely unchanged, which means narrow carriageways, no forecourts on most buildings, and kerb space that was never designed for the number of vehicles now wanting it.

Pall Mall and St James's Street frontages

The club buildings along Pall Mall and St James's Street present a doorway straight onto the pavement. There is no forecourt, no lay-by and, in most cases, no legal place for a car to stand outside. Arrivals here are a set-down at the step, with the driver moving off immediately afterwards. Several buildings have a member of door staff who will indicate exactly where to pull in, and following that instruction is faster than making a judgement from the driving seat.

St James's Street rises from the Mall end up to Piccadilly and carries a good deal of through traffic. Pall Mall runs one-way eastbound along much of its length, so an address on the wrong side of that flow can require a full loop through Waterloo Place and Charles II Street.

The square and the side streets

St James's Square has a private central garden and a one-way circulation around it, with permit and pay bays on the perimeter that are occupied through the working day. It is nevertheless the most useful holding point in the district, because a driver can circulate the square rather than sit blocking a narrow street. King Street, Duke Street St James's, Bury Street and Ryder Street connect the square to St James's Street and are all short, narrow and one-way.

• Ryder Street or Bury Street for addresses between the square and St James's Street
• King Street for the auction room and gallery frontages
• Charles II Street and Waterloo Place for the eastern end of Pall Mall
• Jermyn Street for the Piccadilly-facing shops, entered from Duke Street or Bury Street

The Mall, Horse Guards and ceremonial closures

The Mall is a Royal Parks road rather than an ordinary street. It closes to traffic on Sundays and for a long list of ceremonial occasions, and when it closes the effect ripples through Admiralty Arch, Horse Guards Road and the approaches to Trafalgar Square. A journey planned along the Mall on a Sunday morning simply does not happen, and during state occasions the closure extends across a much wider area for several hours.

The practical response is to check whether an occasion is running on your date and to accept a different approach rather than a longer version of the same one. Coming into St James's from Piccadilly and Duke Street is normally more reliable than approaching from Trafalgar Square when anything ceremonial is under way.

Discretion at the door

Club arrivals carry their own conventions. Many buildings expect guests to be signed in by a member, and several restrict phone use in the public rooms. From a travel point of view what matters is that the pause at the door is brief and unremarkable: the car pulls in, you step out, the car leaves. Luggage or boxes are better handled at a side entrance where the building has one, and asking the destination in advance saves an awkward moment on the step.

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