St James’s Walk was originally called Hart Alley. It was renamed New Prison Walk in 1708, which can’t have enhanced resale values, and – no doubt as a result of pressure from the locals – in 1774 it was renamed once more, this time with the innocuous name of St James’s Walk.
The first building in the road, where it meets Sekforde Street, has the address of 1 Sekforde Street. But it takes up most of the east side of St James’s Walk where it also has the address of Nos 16–18 St James’s Walk.
This triangular building was erected in 1910 as the ‘New Crippleage’, a warehouse and factory for John Groom’s Watercress and Flower Girls’ Christian Mission. It should be explained that John Groom’s Mission was established in 1866 by evangelical reformer John Groom to provide food, warmth, and religion to ‘the poor girls who sold flowers to support themselves in the streets of London’. In 1912 the factory produced 13 million cotton roses for the first Alexandra Rose Day. From the early 1930s until the 1950s, the building was occupied by the tobacco company Gallahers as warehousing and offices. In the early 1980s it was adapted as offices for Help the Aged.
Nos 16 – 18 St James’s Walk is linked to No. 1 Sekforde Street.
No. 20 St James’s Walk is the former Clerkenwell Parochial Sunday School. The school was founded in a house on this site in 1807. It was originally two storeys high and another storey was added in 1858. The building was converted into a private home in 1994.
Nos. 22 to 32 St James’s Walk comprises Georgian and early Victorian houses, which used to have workshops and stables behind them. Nos 22 to 24 St James’s Walk were built first – in the late 18th- or early 19th-centuries. Nos 30 and 32 St James’s Walk were built next, in 1834, followed by Nos 26–32 in 1837.
Priory House, which is No. 3 Sans Walk, occupies most of the west side of St James’s Walk (opposite Nos. 22 to 32).
