St James's Club

The St James's Club was a London gentlemen's club which operated between 1857 and 1978. (Not to be confused with the St James's Club, currently operational in Manchester.)

The club was founded in 1857 by the Liberal statesman the second Earl Granville and by the Marchese d'Azeglio, Minister of Sardinia to the Court of St. James's, after a dispute at the Travellers' Club. Most members of the diplomatic corps resigned from the Travellers' and joined the new club. The club's members continued to be largely diplomats and authors, and it became the home of the Dilettanti Society.

The name St James’s Club had previously been used by William Crockford as the official name of his gambling ‘hell’ in 1823 when he acquired the lease to 50 St James’s Street. In the next two years he also acquired the leases to nos. 51-53, and when he pulled these down he transferred the Club to 106 Pall Mall. When the pioneer of photography William Fox Talbot (1800–1877) was elected in 1825 to the St James's Club it was already using the 106 Pall Mall premises, where it remained until late 1826. At about the time part of the Guards Club premises at 49 St James’s Street collapsed on 9 November 1826 as a result of the rebuilding of Crockford’s Club next door, Crockford evidently moved the Club out of 106 Pall Mall, as the Guards Club was able to move into it within a few weeks, and it remained there until it returned to 49 St James’s Street in November 1827. (The Traveller’s Club only moved from 49 Pall Mall into 106 after the old building had been pulled down in 1829 and its new premises, designed by Charles Barry, had been completed by July 1832.) Crockford’s palatial premises for his St James’s Club, taking up the entire site of 50-53 St James’s Street, was opened in mid November 1827 and closed on 1 January 1846.

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