St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district in the City of Westminster, west London, lying about 2.5 miles northwest of Charing Cross. Traditionally the northern part of the ancient parish and Metropolitan Borough of Marylebone, it extends east to west from Regent’s Park to the Edgware Road, with the Swiss Cottage area of Hampstead lying to the north.
The area is best known for Lord's Cricket Ground, home of Marylebone Cricket Club, Middlesex CCC, and a regular international Test Cricket venue. It also includes the Abbey Road Studios, well known through its association with the Beatles.
Origin
Once part of the Great Middlesex Forest, from 1238 it was, as St. Johns Wood Farm, a property of St John's Priory, Clerkenwell. This area was equivalent to what was then the north part of Marylebone.The Priory allocated the estate estate to agricultural tenants as a source of produce and income. The estate remained Crown property until 21 March 1675 when Charles II granted the St John's Wood estate to Charles Henry Wotton. On 22 March 1732 City merchant Henry Samuel Eyre acquired the majority of the estate, around 500 acres, from Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield. The St John's Wood estate came to be known as the Eyre estate in the 19th century after it was developed by the Eyre brothers. The estate still exists much reduced geographically.
Built environment
A masterplan for the development of St John's Wood was prepared in 1794 but development did not start until 1804 when Henry Samuel Eyre II and Walpole Eyre held their first auction. St John's Wood developed from the early 19th century onwards. One of the first developers was James Burton. It was among the first London suburbs with lower-density villa housing and frequent avenues, but fewer communal garden squares. Most of the villas have since been subdivided and replaced by small apartment blocks or terraces. This pattern of development has made it one of the most expensive areas of London.It is an affluent neighbourhood, with the area postcode ranked by Forbes magazine as the fifth most expensive in London, based on average home prices in 2007. According to a 2014 survey, St John's Wood tenants pay the highest average rent in London, at £1,889 per week.
The area is home to St. John's Wood Church Grounds, which contains the only nature reserve in the City of Westminster. Much of the neighbourhood is covered by a conservation area, a small part of which extends into neighbouring Camden.
St John's Wood is the location of Lord's Cricket Ground, home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the Marylebone Cricket Club, an international test cricket grounds known as the Home of Cricket on account of its role as the original headquarters of cricket. Lords opened in 1810, replacing Lord's Old Ground, also in St John’s Wood, which had been in operation since 1787 and which was subsequently redeveloped as Dorset Square.
Abbey Road Studios are located in Abbey Road, where The Beatles recorded, notably the Abbey Road album, the cover of which features the band crossing the road.
The King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery was formerly based at St John's Wood Barracks. The regiment moved to Woolwich on 6 February 2012; the barracks has been demolished and the site developed as upmarket housing. Grove Road power station in Lodge Road was a former electricity generating station that operated from 1902 until its closure and demolition in 1969. It is now the site of two major high-voltage electricity sub-stations.
Education
The area has various schools, both state and independent:- 3 House Club
- Robinsfield Infant School
- Saint Christina's Primary School
- Barrow Hill Junior School
- George Eliot Primary School
- Quintin Kynaston Community Academy
- The American School in London
- Arnold House School
Places of worship
Christian
- Abbey Road Baptist Church
- St John's Wood Church
- St Mark's Church, Hamilton Terrace
- The Church of Our Lady
Muslim
- London Central Mosque
Jewish
- St John’s Wood United Synagogue
- The Liberal Jewish Synagogue
- The New London Synagogue
- Saatchi Shul
Transport and locales
- Belsize Park to the north-east
- Hampstead to the north
- Kilburn to the north-west
- Lisson Grove to the south
- Maida Vale to the south-west
- Marylebone to the south
- Primrose Hill to the east
- Regent's Park to the south
- Swiss Cottage to the north
The nearest London Overground station is South Hampstead.
Notable residents
Commemorative blue plaques
- Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema OM, painter, at 44 Grove End Road
- Gilbert Bayes, sculptor, at 4 Greville Place
- Sir Joseph Bazalgette, civil engineer, at 17 Hamilton Terrace
- Sir Thomas Beecham CH, conductor and impresario, at 31 Grove End Road
- George Frampton, sculptor, at 32 Queen's Grove
- William Powell Frith, painter, at 114 Clifton Hill
- Guy Gibson V.C., pilot and leader of the Dam Busters, at 32 Aberdeen Place
- Thomas Hood, poet, at 28 Finchley Road
- Thomas Huxley, biologist, at 38 Marlborough Place
- Melanie Klein, psychoanalyst, at 42 Clifton Hill
Past and present residents
- Michael Algar – musician and songwriter
- David Alliance, Baron Alliance – businessman and politician
- A. J. Ayer – philosopher, was born and grew up in the area
- Douglas Bader – distinguished World War II fighter pilot, was born there
- Princess Marie-Esméralda of Belgium – member of the Belgian royal family
- Chili Bouchier – actress
- Charles Bradlaugh – founder and first president of the National Secular Society lived at 20, Circus Road, house since demolished, now St John's Wood library
- Richard Branson – entrepreneur, founder of Virgin Group
- Sarah Burton – fashion designer
- James Caan – entrepreneur
- Christabel Cockerell – British painter
- Wayne Daniel – Middlesex and West Indian cricketer
- Jill Esmond – actress, first wife of Laurence Olivier
- Vanessa Feltz – broadcaster
- Andy Fletcher – musician
- Leonard N. Fowles – organist/composer
- Lucian Freud – artist
- Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau – member of the Dutch Royal Family
- Noel Gallagher – musician and songwriter
- Sidney Frank Godley VC – soldier, school caretaker
- Avram Grant – football manager
- Daphne Guinness – socialite
- Tony Hicks – musician
- Stephen Hough – concert pianist
- Eric Idle – actor and comedian
- Andy Irvine – child actor and folk musician
- Kia Joorabchian – businessman
- Nigel Kennedy – violinist
- Imran Khan – cricketer, and Pakistani politician and current prime minister
- Lillie Langtry – actress
- John Lawford – Royal Navy officer
- Damian Lewis – actor
- Sir John Major – former prime minister
- Terry Manning – music producer
- Stella Margetson – novelist and author
- Sir Paul McCartney – musician
- Ewan McGregor – actor
- Jonathan Rhys Meyers – actor
- Sir Jonathan Miller – writer, opera director, physiologist and sculptor
- Kate Moss – model
- Elisabeth Murdoch – businesswoman and daughter of Rupert Murdoch
- Alex Prior – singer/composer
- Keith Richards – rock musician and songwriter of The Rolling Stones lived on Carlton Hill in the 1960s.
- Nicolas Roeg - director and cinematographer
- Mark Ronson – musician, DJ, singer, and record producer
- Georgina Castle Smith – children's writer
- Mel Smith – comedian, actor, film director
- Gregg Sulkin – actor
- Sachin Tendulkar – cricketer
- James Tissot – French painter and illustrator; sold his house at 17 Grove End Road to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
- Norman Shanks Kerr – physician
- Jihadi John – British Islamic extremist
- John Weston – cricketer
- Clarissa Dickson Wright – chef
- Dornford Yates, English novelist, real name Cecil William Mercer, at Elm Tree Road
St John's Wood in literature, music and television
- Henstridge Place and Woronzow Road London NW8 featured in the “Give Us This Day Arthur Daley’s Bread” episode of the popular U.K. television series Minder.
- Count and Countess Fosco live at No. 5 Forest Road, St. John's Wood in Wilkie Collins's 1859 sensation novel The Woman in White.
- Irene Adler lives there in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1891 Sherlock Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia".
- In the first instalment of John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga, The Man of Property, Young Jolyon lives on fictional Wistaria Avenue with his second wife and family.
- St John's Wood is the home of fictional characters Bingo and Rosie Little in P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster short stories and novels, written from the early 1920s onward.
- Referenced in the Rolling Stones song, "Play with Fire", released in 1965.
- The protagonist of J.G. Ballard's novel Millennium People, is a psychologist who lives in St. John's Wood, which he abandons to join a middle-class rebellion.
- Appears in two books by Howard Jacobson, as the setting for his 2004 book The Making of Henry, followed in his 2010 Man Booker Prize winning novel The Finkler Question as the planned location for the Museum of Anglo-Jewish Culture.
- Violet Hill, a street and area off Abbey Road with Violet Hill Gardens and Violet Hill Hospital, is the source of the name in Coldplay's 2008 song "Violet Hill".
- Due to the conveniently close location to Elstree Studios,, St John's Wood was used extensively for location shooting for many of the ITC adventure shows of the 1960s and 1970s, including The Saint, Randall and Hopkirk , The Persuaders! and Return of the Saint.
- Duran Duran’s video for their first single "Planet Earth" was shot at St. Johns Wood with Russell Mulcahy in December 1980.
- It is noted in Robbie William's Christmas album song,' Idlewild'. He had 'never been to St John's Wood'.