London’s Alleys: Old Barrack Yard, SW1

This is a winding passage next to Hyde Park Corner that has recently been redeveloped into a posh little passage.

There was very little here before the end of the 17th century when a narrow road passed through the fields at Hyde Park Corner. Ownership passed through quite a lot of people, until eventually Westminster Abbey was the landlord and they leased it to Henry Guy of Tring, and Joseph Shayle of St James’s. They developed the area, and to the south of the new housing was the barracks and parade ground of the First Regiment of Foot Guards, built in 1760.

The northern portion of Old Barrack Yard is all that remains of a large, irregularly shaped enclosure which was once the outer parade ground for some 500 guardsmen with the barracks themselves to the south — where today St Paul’s Church stands.

The barracks were demolished in 1840, and the southern part was redeveloped by the American merchant, Nathan Dunn, in 1842 as a Chinese pagoda, which was the entrance to an exhibition hall full of Chinese art and artefacts called Dunn’s Chinese Collection.

The exhibition moved location fairly shortly after it opened, and eventually was sold to James Pennethorne, who moved the collection and the pagoda to Victoria Park in East London. It finally closed down in 1956.

Back to Old Barrack Yard, the site of the exhibition centre was redeveloped into a small school and more housing, and was largely untouched until the 1960s.

Then, the Savoy Hotels Group acquired the whole block between Old Barrack Yard and Wilton Place as the new site for the Berkeley Hotel, which had outgrown its premises in Piccadilly. It was almost entirely rebuilt in 1966–72, to designs by Brian O’Rorke.

More recently, the hotel was redeveloped, poshing up the already posh area with even more posh.

What had been a bad alley of a space, notable more for the back entrances for goods deliveries to the office and hotel is now a pedestrianised looking space, although still technically a road, with considerably improved paving replacing the old tarmac.

Further down the passageway, there’s a new corridor covered with arches for planting to eventually turn into a green tunnel. This passage was added during the 1960s rebuild, but was a closed off space for the hotel. As part of the rebuild, it was opened up and given this verdant makeover as a new route for rich car owners to get to the car park space under the hotel.

That leads down to Wilton Place, a quiet road in the middle of the old barracks that first developed this part of London from empty fields into urban development.

A one-bedroom home was recently on the market for £1.5 million. Ouch!