🇫🇷 C'est le 14 juillet, la fête nationale 🇫🇷
So I've been to a central London street named France.
Petty France is a short street just south of St James's Park. Its name comes from a small settlement of French traders that grew up on the edge of in Westminster in the 16th century. One end was for woolstaplers (i.e. traders in wool) and called "Petty Calais", and the other end for French merchants who sailed over to buy which became known as "Petty France". Its strategic semi-rural location, roughly halfway between Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, would eventually make Petty France an attractive place to live. During the French Revolutionary War residents voted to change the name, aghast at its connections, and in the precise opposite of what might happen today chose to rename it in honour of the Duke of York. The road retained the name York Street until approximately 100 years ago when its original name was restored.
The eastern end of Petty France is the mini-roundabout at the foot of Queen Anne's Gate, just outside a busy tube station. The famous building on the left is the historic headquarters of London Underground, Charles Holden's groundbreaking nine-storey cruciform office block, which was constructed on top of St James's Park station in the late 1920s. It was called 55 Broadway because the main entrance opens onto a brief stretch of road of that name, whereas had the door been a few feet to the left it might instead have been known as 100 Petty France. Given it doesn't officially open onto today's street I shall instead cross the street to number 102.
The hulking concrete of 102 Petty France is admired by lovers of Brutalist architecture and virtually nobody else. It was built by Basil Spence on the site of a former mansion block and completed 50 years ago. Originally it was intended to be a commercial office development but the Home Office needed space so they moved in instead, staying until 2005 when they departed to a purpose-built building in Marsham Street. This was perfect timing for the Ministry of Justice, founded in 2007, so a new tranche of civil servants moved in and this is now David Lammy's administrative domain.
It's very much an bureaucratic fortress with a perimeter of concrete blocks and sturdy bollards, also CCTV cameras pointing every which way and more. I suspect they got exceptionally suspicious when I started taking photos, indeed this is now an intensely surveilled street. The building's only assuaging feature is a series of justice-related quotations in the lower windows, from John Locke and the 1689 English Bill of Rights to Francis Bacon and (obviously) Magna Carta. It may look incongruously tall but it has the same number of floors as the block it replaced - Queen Anne's Mansions - which at 14 storeys was once the loftiest residential building in Britain. The most famous person to rent a flat there was probably Sir Edward Elgar who stayed for six months in 1910 while trying to write his Violin Concerto.
Even Queen Anne's Mansions was controversial, not least because it replaced the home of one of Britain's greatest poets. That'd be John Milton who moved into a 'pretty Garden-house on Petty-France' in 1651 when he was Secretary for Foreign Tongues in Cromwell's administration. His rear garden would have opened directly onto St James's Park and was also terribly convenient for Parliament. John was alas going blind around this time, thus when it came to writing Paradise Lost it all had to be dictated and that particular challenge started here. Later occupants of number 19 include philosopher Jeremy Bentham, founder of University College London, and the libertarian essayist William Hazlitt, both drawn here by Milton's previous presence. Demolition of this revered property came in 1873, also the felling of a tall tree planted by Milton himself, and somehow this makes the Ministry of Justice's current tenure all the more uncomfortable.
The whole of the rest of the north side of Petty France is occupied by an even more repellent official building - Wellington Barracks. A military garrison opened here in 1833 facing onto St James's Park, ideally situated for London ceremonial, with the addition of interlocking concrete buildings out back in 1979. This required the demolition of all the existing buildings fronting Petty France, replaced by a very thick wall, an accommodation block and the entrance to a large area of parking. Armed soldiers oversee the raising of the barrier at all times, just in case, so this is an even worse place than the MoJ to be taking photos. Looking up towards the soldiers' tiny rooms everyone has the same utilitarian curtains and some display the flags of the occupant's army company, proudly proclaiming "look, I'm in the Coldstream Guards".
The other side of Petty France is if anything drabber, at least at the eastern end. Albany House is an L-shaped office block built just north of the tube platforms in 1972 and currently to let. Its sole redeeming features are two anthropomorphic bronzes either side of the main entrance, a twisted holey pair called Man and Woman by Willi Soukop (who was a tutor of Elisabeth Frink). A more significant government office block lingers up the road at number 70 - Clive House - which for 50 years was London's regional UK Passport Office. Until 2002 you might have found yourself dashing here for an emergency replacement and waiting in an accursed queue, before that particular service moved to Eccleston Square. Clive House was recently offloaded by the Civil Service as part of a consolidation/savings programme, and there are plans for the Ministry of Justice's building to follow suit, not yet in train.
Thankfully some older buildings survive in the remaining quarter of the street. The Adam and Eve on the corner of Palmer Street has been serving beer for over 300 years, although the existing building dates to 1881. These days it focuses on the passing tourist trade, plugging Pub Food and Fish & Chips in the windows, although a few more hanging baskets wouldn't go amiss. Those outside the Buckingham Arms are gloriously colourful and attract considerably more tourist interest, indeed I had to apologise to a florally-obsessed Japanese couple for getting in their way. The beer's good, CAMRA says, but the current pub manifestation is only from 1898. Petty France's sole listed building is a few doors down, roughly opposite the barracks' entrance, a small 17th century hint of how this street would once have looked.
Tourist coaches often park up Tothill Street, the other side of the tube station, their cargoes snaking off towards the Palace behind a flag-holding guide. Other visitors rouse from their hotel beds and need somewhere that serves sparse luxury patisserie, so two outlets called Royal Quarter oblige. Employees of the Crown Prosecution Service and Office for Budget Responsibility can instead buy nicotine pouches and Red Bull at Portlands Express convenience store, while military types whip out their IDs to gain admittance at the barracks' back door. It's all tourists, civil servants and soldiers down Petty France these days, and no sign of anything French whatsoever.
