SQUARES 
223 
has been placed outside the rails at the southern end. 
The plane trees are very fine, and were planted at the 
end of the eighteenth century, it is said, by Mr. Edward 
Bouverie in 1789. The plane has been so long grown 
in London these cannot be said with certainty to be the 
oldest, as is so often stated. Some in Lincoln’s Inn 
Fields are decidedly larger. In 1722 Fairchild writes 
in praise of the plane trees, about 40 feet high, in 
the churchyard of St. Dunstan-in-the-East. Loudon 
mentions one at the Physic Garden, planted by Philip 
Miller, which was 115 feet high in 1837 (a western 
Plane—not the great oriental Plane which fell down a 
few years ago). The western Plane (Platinus occidentalis) 
was introduced to this country many years after the 
eastern Plane {Platinus orientalism . The tree most common 
in town is a variety of eastern Plane called accrifolia , 
known as the “ London Plane”: this must have been a 
good deal planted all through the eighteenth century, 
so it is difficult to assign to any actual tree the priority. 
St. James’s Square is older than any of the squares 
already glanced at, having been built in the time of 
Charles II. It was known as Pall Mall Field or Close, 
originally part of St. James’s Fields, and the actual site 
of the Square was a meadow used by those attached to 
the Court as a sort of recreation ground. Henry 
Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, leased it in 1665 from 
Charles II., and began to plan the Square or “Piazza,” 
as it was called at first. The deadly year of the Plague, 
followed by the Great Fire, delayed the building, and 
the houses were not finished and lived in till 1676. 
No. 6 in the Square, belonging to the Marquess of 
Bristol, has been in his family since that time. Every 
one of the fine old houses has its story of history and 
