St. James's Park (Part I)

Note: this is the eighth chapter of a continuing story which has not previously been published on LinkedIn. To read the other chapters, visit Britain Unleashed: Jerry Lee Goes to London, where you'll find the rest of the story, as well as photos, maps, and videos.

With One Birdcage Walk in the rearview mirror, we put Jerry in the lead and turned right to head north on Horse Guards Road, where straight away we passed Storey's Gate Lodge, a plain, tan stone-and-brick building on the corner of the two streets. (Add it to the list of buildings most people walk past without really noticing them.)

In this case, though, it's probably a good thing that no one really needs to pay attention to it, because until recently, this otherwise unremarkable Grade II-listed building was a police station.

(Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I consider not being intimately acquainted with a police station to be a Very Good Thing.)

Happily, it seems there's not enough crime in the area these days that a police station is needed anymore in St. James's Park, but that wasn't always the case, if seventeenth-century English writer John Wilmot is to be believed.

We'll skip the racy details, but feel free to check out Wilmot's 1672 poem A Ramble in St. James's Park if you want to read a for-adults-only account of what sorts of antics England's rich and famous got up to while King Charles II—the aptly-nicknamed Merry Monarch—partied his way through the Restoration. (Disclaimer: you've been warned.)

Have you had any thoughts yet as to who would name a road "Birdcage Walk"? So far there's still no definitive answer as to who named it, but there is a definitive answer as to why it was named what it was named: after King James I took over ownership of the park from Queen Elizabeth I in the early 1600s, he decided a menagerie in Westminster was a cracking good idea.

What the King wants, the King gets, so up went a line of aviaries along the side of the then-private royal road. (The hoi polloi weren't allowed to walk on the Walk until 1828.)

Years later, the fun-loving Puritan Oliver Cromwell—whose idea of a good time was to cancel Christmas—let the park go to ruin, but Charles II both restored and improved it.

During his reign, the house of Master Edward Storey, Keeper of the King's Birds, was built at the park's entrance, and in 1840, the current Storey's Gate Lodge made its dull appearance on the site of the original house.

Quick London travel tip: if you happen to find yourself stuck on the Jubilee Line from Westminster Station, you can make your escape through an emergency exit in the lodge.

It doesn't look as if the two connect, but you get used to walking miles underground between Tube lines or when you're heading for the way out.

And if you want to know why the park is where it is in the first place, here's a question for you: what's the connection between Hawaii, St. James's Park, and the American Revolution?

Hang on to that thought... we'll come back to it.

One of the things you notice as you ramble around London is that you can't walk ten feet without passing one historic monument or building or another, and a stroll along Horse Guards Road is no exception.

At the northwest corner of the Treasury end of Government Offices Great George Street and across Horse Guards Road from Storey's Gate Lodge is the entrance to the Churchill War Rooms, the underground bunker where the man himself led Britain to victory in WWII.

So here's another question for you: did you know that back in February 1914, Winston Churchill predicted the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor? Well, he sort of did, anyway.

What he actually did was make the very astute observation that "seaplanes... when they carry torpedoes, may prove capable of playing a decisive part in operations against capital ships."

The Royal Navy thought this was a capital idea, and in November 1940 they used it to good effect against the Italians in the shallow harbor at Taranto.

It's a shame the U.S. wasn't paying attention, because just over a year later, the Japanese, who also apparently thought Churchill had been onto something, did nearly the same thing in the nearly-as-shallow Pearl Harbor.

Now back to that Hawaii/St. James's Park/American Revolution question we were pondering earlier....

If you carry on walking past the entrance to the War Rooms, and if you're paying attention, you might just spot the first part of the answer to the question about what links Hawaii, St. James's Park, and the American Revolution: a statue of Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive of Plassey.

So what's the rest of the answer to that question?

 India.

 And that's where we'll start when we catch up with our Wandering Shepherd next time....

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Gina Longo is a Leadership Development Trainer and the owner of Gina Longo Consulting. A former airline Captain and flight instructor, she now takes her experience as a leader in the aviation industry into the corporate world, where she specialises in helping businesses solve talent development and employee retention problems.

She and her two German Shepherds spent several years travelling around the UK in a touring caravan, and Britain Unleashed is the result.

➤ If you're looking to troubleshoot your talent development and/or employee retention problems, please visit www.ginacall.com to schedule a complimentary Cause-Analysis Consultation.