The history of St John's and the Hyde Park Estate is intimately tied up with the history of Tyburn Gallows.  North of Hyde Park and west of the gallows there was farmland and no building took place until after the gallows had gone and the grisly reputation of the area began to change.

Up to the 18th century Paddington was a little village outside London with just one church: St Mary’s on Paddington Green.  It lay north of Hyde Park and west of the Edgware Road, the main road to the north, which the Romans had called Watling Street.

But London grew; and as it grew, all the little villages started to merge and their farmland was sold and built on.  The town crept up past Tyburn Road (now called Oxford Street) so Marylebone and Bloomsbury were built.  West of the park Belgravia’s mansions and palaces rose up; but people were put off building north of the park because of Tyburn Tree – the infamous gallows where so many traitors, murderers and thieves met their ends!

In 1783 the gallows were moved to Newgate Prison and with the building Act of 1795 development could start.  In 1807, about twenty years after the gallows had gone, the first building contract was agreed and Connaught Place began to go up almost at once.

In 1807 Prince William Frederick, the Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh and Earl of Connaught, built number 1 for his brother-in-law, the Duke of Sussex.  The Duke then built the remaining houses in Connaught Place.  Princess Caroline of Ansbach, the Princess of Wales, lived at number 7 and her daughter, Princess Charlotte, ran away from home to seek refuge there.