Walks in London

London 's West End Piccadilly Circus,Shaftesbury, Avenue, Soho, Chinatown is known for its famous theatres, lively nightlife, and for its numerous places to eat, drink, and pass the time.


Covent Garden, Theatreland & Chinatown
Covent Garden
Based around the Inigo Jones designed Piazza, a startlingly designed market area on several floors, the shopping mall of its day, facing the dominating facade and hidden gardens of St Paul’s church, I remember it when in the 1960’s and early 70’s it was a bustling wholesale market spilling into the surrounding roads, when it had finally been strangled by the London traffic the of a quick pot of gold in development began to tempt the scourge of today’s city’s evil “developer” when yet another office tower was planned, in the 1970’s a concerted series of protest’s thwarted them, these magnificent buildings were saved!

This walk is in the main, includes my memories of the former vegetable market and for the theatre area known as Covent Garden.

Loosely bounded by the river on the south now built up over the strand (the name implies it was formerly the edge of the river Thames) to the East, Kingsway, roughly High Holborn in the north and Charring Cross, South, Trafalgar Square and Soho or Chinatown and Charring Cross road to the west,

We start at St Martin's Lane, the first emphasis is on stage, but before that there is a small prelude. St Martin's Lane was the old direct route north from the signpost of Charing Cross,
I believe that the AA handbook originally used Charing Cross as the starting and finishing point for distances to/from London.

The original Charing Cross (the present one is a replica) marked the end of his journey. and was built up by 1613
The crosses were raised by Edward I in deep mourning of his beloved queen tracing the path of the cortege of Eleanor of Castile who died at Harby, Northants.
(there is an other made famous in a nursery rhyme at Banbury )

The one at Charing Cross originally stood where the statue of Charles I now stands. Unlike most cities, London has no single central point where all distances are taken from. The original London Stone (still in the City of London) was once used for this purpose. (However, when the city's focus moved west, it was not replaced. There were once suggestions to place an inscribed obelisk at St Pauls as a baseline, and to some degree, the black post in Leicester Square now serves this purpose, but there is no fixed point. Some measurements use Trafalgar Square, others Westminster Bridge, Hyde Park Corner, or Marble Arch)

Its southern end was however chopped about first by the creation of Trafalgar Square and then in 1887 by the rebuilding that opened up Charing Cross Road, which both took over St Martin's Lane's function as a main road and to some extent preserved it, changing the area into a back water.

On the island in the wide irregular space north-east of Trafalgar Square which the junction of these two roads created between St Martin-in-the-Fields and the front of the National Portrait Gallery, one might start this walk with a moment to reflect on the spirit of the latter-day English martyr, Edith Cavell, the Red Cross nurse who at dawn on 12 October 1915, was shot by a German firing squad in Brussels. In heroism she is not alone, but in her dying she welded herself into the living conscience of English history with four words: "Patriotism is not enough".

Into the fabric of London itself she is portrayed in a monument not really in keeping (by Sir George Frampton, 1920) - it has been said to be the ugliest in the city. She is in pale stone, in the severe portrayal of her in her nursing cape, it is impressive, she is set against a cross of grey granite. Over the road east of the statue is the old national school sits next to the churchyard of St Martin's and has a facade of elegant Regency style, and round the corner, lying in his sarcophagus it seems, a new statue of Oscar Wilde, cigarette in ringed fingers, by Maggi Rambling,

St Martin's Lane itself is fairly narrow, its west side mainly recent (backing Charing Cross Road) but on its right, east, side, despite the solid face of the Coliseum, houses and shops dating from the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century brick over the shop fronts.

The Coliseum is the first thing that hits you, all columns and beige stucco and a large globe high in the sky (once the globe was made to revolve, but due to legal niceties is only allowed to give the illusion, with the aid of lights, of revolving). It was built in 1904, to outdo Drury Lane, with a three-part revolving stage, three tea-rooms, a roof-garden, even a post-box in the hall; it was for variety and spectacle, for shows stars of the day like Diaghilev (whose ballet ran three seasons here) - but, after seeming briefly to sell out to Cinema, it is now permanently opera - the English National Opera. Other theatres cling still to traditional theatre - the Duke of York's, the Albany and through in Charing Cross Road, the Wyndham's and Garrick theatres, plus the....

The Salisbury Court Theatre was a theatre in 17th-century London. It was located in the neighbourhood of Salisbury Court, which was formerly the London residence of the Bishops of Salisbury. Salisbury Court was acquired by Richard Sackville in 1564; when Thomas Sackville was created Earl of Dorset in 1604, the building was renamed Dorset House. (His descendant, Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset, was Queen Henrietta Maria's Lord Chamberlain in the 1630s, and was a prime mover in theatre and drama in London in that era, including the force behind the founding of the Salisbury Court Theatre.) is a national monument.

The Lane is further fed people by its alleys and courts, from 1 Bridges Place just by the Coliseum, unremarkable in all except its sheer blank narrowness, to Cecil Court on the left, a pedestrian precinct for book browsers, print collectors. On the right of the Lane, Goodwin's Court, an alley containing a little row of late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century shop fronts with unloved potted evergreens; then a plaque marks the site of the famous Chippendale workshops, they were here between 1753 and 1813, setting a coolly elegant standard of furniture that was to become, perhaps a little misleadingly, the symbol of a whole civilisation. New Row, also on the right, is the local shopping street, in tired London brick being one car wide, with a shop selling antique scientific instruments and a coffee-shop; Beyond, in Bedford Street, another byword for gentility and wealth, "The Lady" magazine,

Just a little way up St Martin's, modern London joins in, the imposing Orion House (formerly Thorn House, built 1960,) - in its day one of the best new structures, with a vast - abstract bronze by Geoffrey Clarke. From the south, Orion House is offset by the sturdy brick of a Victorian pub, the Cranbourn, this is where Garrick Street and Long Acre come in from the east, and Cranbourn Street and Great Newport Street from the west. Garrick Street has, fifty yards along its right, the Garrick Club (all in honour of David Garrick of course, whom we shall meet in a few pages), a palazzo-type building of the mid 1800s wearing its grime with well, Inside some of the paintings may be glimpsed from the street at night. Long Acre is a much older street (Dryden lived there for a time; so did Oliver Cromwell), but became the premises of Covent Garden wholesalers. In Great Newport Street, to the left of St Martin's Lane at this junction, a blue plaque on a once-smart, black-tiled front records the presence on this site of Sir Joshua Reynolds between 1753 and 1761, when he was establishing his reputation and before he moved into Leicester Square. It is now the Photographers' Gal1ery, pop in the coffee and cake is reasonably priced and very tasty, I heard that it is planning to move and the building is to be sold.

Further up to the left here (West Street) are two more theatres, the St Martin's and the Ambassadors; there is also a famous theatrical restaurant, the Ivy, which, after decades of gentle decline, is now one of the smartest in town. But St Martin's Lane itself is continues narrowly northward, transforming itself into Monmouth Street, once proverbial for its old clothes shops, but today becoming distinctly smart.

Monmouth Street is interrupted by Seven Dials, a conjunction of seven streets, and originally an early and grandiose piece of town planning (Evelyn went to see it in 1694 - '7 streets make a star from a Doric pillar'). Almost a century later, word got around that treasure trove was in the base of the pillar with the seven dials; it came down in l 773, and though nothing was found, was not put up again until in 1820 it was re-erected at Weybridge in Surrey. Meanwhile the area had decayed, and it is as part of the notorious rookeries, the raddled slums of the St Giles area, that it is characteristically reflected in Dickens, in Sketches by Boz of the l830's. Hogarth had in fact used it as setting for his Gin Lane. It was then at least a focus, but when Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, cleared through the slums thirty years after Dickens wrote, created a new circus at Cambridge Circus a few yards away, and so it is today, for all its modern shiny flats, the Cambridge Theatre, and the erection of a facsimile column in l 988, here is a small street market and Portwine the butchers, between it and Cambridge Circus. The new column with its six dials (the seventh is the column itself) still waits for you. Close by, the Comyn Ching Triangle, The Comyn Ching triangle is typical of many central urban sites – an odd-shaped plot, which began as an 18th-century property speculation, redeveloped by Terry Farrell and named after the ironmongers that were her on the site In 1716 John Gray observed that the area was renowned for ballad printers and singers, not so far from Denmark St (also known as Tin Pan Alley) is a small street off Charing Cross Road, that has long been associated with music stores and publishers.

Monmouth Street continues, sliding past on its eastern side Endell Street (popular restaurants), and the fashionable Neal's Yard area, where whole food is being followed by high fashion. Neal Street with tourist hot spots, The Tea House, The Hat Shop, The Astrology Shop, and Neal Street East with smart food and kitchen shops, oriental goods. Neal's Yard boasts whole food cafes and shops, homeopathic remedies, a herbalist; in Shorts Gardens a cheese shop. Then into the north-east extremities of Shaftesbury Avenue which ends in a roundabout.
This end of Shaftesbury Avenue with its gallant but thin trees, But fifty yards west of the roundabout, up St Giles High Street it is now impossible to imagine the village of St Giles-in-the-Fields, as it is now, the church of St Giles hidden in the new buildings of the triangle between Shaftesbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road and New Oxford Street, It was once a lazar-house, or leper colony, founded by Henry I's Queen, Matilda, but the present building is around early 1730's, looking familiar if you know James Gibbs's churches, particularly St Martin in the Fields. Its churchyard is a small but pleasant retreat, especially at the week-end when almost always empty and you can sit under the trees, and admire the York stone, amid the tomb chests that stand about, their inscriptions decaying, one tomb opposite the church's west end, defies this...

Here lieth Richard Penderell, Preserver and Conductor to his sacred Majesty King Charles the Second of Great Britain,
after his escape from Worcester Fight, in the year 1651, who died Feb 8, 1671.

Hold, Passenger, here’s shrouded in this Herse,
Unparalell’d Pendrell, thro’ the universe.
Like when the Eastern Star from Heaven gave light
To three lost kings; so he, in such dark night,
To Britain’s Monarch, toss’d by adverse War,
On Earth appear’d, a second Eastern Star,
A Pope, a Stern, in her rebellious Main,
A Pilot to her Royal Sovereign.
Now to triumph in Heav’n’s eternal sphere,
Whilst Albion’s Chronicles, with matching fame,
Embalm the story of great Pendrell’s Name.
The interior of the former cathloic church has a hue of grey and blue, brown bodywork with gilding, but some very satisfactory detailing - see exactly and justly the galleries marry into the columns. There are many memorials in the church. It used to be the custom for condemned criminals on their way to be given a cup of ale at St Giles.The road linking with Charing Cross Road is Denmark Street, popularly known as Tin Pan Alley, mentioned before, former home of the London pop music business, now shops with electric guitars, drums and all the kit needed for pop music is sold. Our way lies east, on Prince's Circus off Shaftesbury Avenue (on the corner of New Oxford Street) is what I regard as the true home of the London umbrella, a handsomely old-fashioned shop, Smith's, Prince's Circus also has its theatre, which changed its name to the Shaftesbury, and also the Oasis Leisure Centre, with the only heated outdoor swimming pool in central London, on the site of 1853 baths and wash houses.

Here High Holborn begins, where was a village or hamlet as early as Domesday; to the right it is Drury Lane. Then into Drury Lane home of Nell Gwynn, one-time orange girl of Covent Garden, actress, mistress of Charles II and mother of Dukes. The north end of Drury Lane is quite neat, with a antique shops, some coffee bars, pubs, but the roads which lead off it and are labelled with the names of former local celebrities - Dryden, Betterton, Macklin - are all nineteenth century. A big crossing comes, with Long Acre from the west, and Great Queen Street to the east; the latter was built up in the early seventeenth century and called 'the first regular street in London', regretfully only one or two late eighteenth-century houses survive
in the gigantic presence of Freemasonry, the headquarters of which dominate the southern side. Farther down Drury Lane, then turn right into Russell Street along the side of Drury Lane Theatre with its forest of blue cast-iron columns. The big entrance to the theatre opens on to Catherine Street on your left but go on a few yards to the junction of Russell Street and Bow Street; Russell Street ends to the west in the glass and green-painted iron conservatory-like prospect of Covent Garden, while up Bow Street to your right you can see the portico, with its giant Corinthian columns, of the Royal Opera House, (opposite that is Bow Street Police Station, empty now but awaiting a new police museum) It is the fourth theatre on the site; the first, where Nell Gwynn played, was burned down in 1672; the second was by Wren, It was rebuilt (the third time) in 1794 under Sheridan's management, and in 1800 a madman took attempted to shoot George III from the stalls, this building burned in 1804, that gave its owner, Sheridan, occasion for comments that have passed into legend - 'Surely a gentleman may warm his hands at his own fireside'.


The rival in Bow Street, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, towered, over the nearby Floral Market of Covent Garden alongside (both by the same architect, E. M. Barry). Now it incorporates it. The first building began when John Rich leased the site from the Duke of Bedford (whose family still cannily retains the site). In 1808 it burned down; it was rebuilt, and again burned down in 1856; within two years a new building by E.M. Barry was opened. Nearly 150 years later, after much well-documented controversy, the redeveloped Royal Opera House has finally reopened its doors. Russell Street ends to the west in Covent Garden, the square or piazza where for centuries was London's main vegetable, fruit and fower market. Then, Covent Garden's day used to begin about midnight, as the carts then lorries began to come in; crates, sacks and nets unloaded under the flood light until about five or six in the morning the market was in full swing and the tough old costermongers, moving produce around as wholesalers sold it off. Then the atmosphere was lively mixing smells of flower, vegetables and fruit, the cobbles were covered in waste, and the Floral Hall was ablaze with massed flowers and exotic fruit, as one of the places where you could get a beer in the restricted pub licensing days of the 1960's it was on of our stops when we passed by early!. Market over by nine in the morning, In November 1974, the market ceased trading here, transplanted south of the river to its new tailor-made up-to-date premises at Nine Elms, while its old home was doomed to that insidious destroyer of most great cities in the twentieth century-planning blight. The Floral Hall has been annexed by the Opera House. The former Central Market Building (1828) standing in the middle of the piazza was saved from demolition, beautifully restored, and is flourishing as a shopping arcade. Part of the Flower Market became the Theatre Museum (a branch of the V & A), and another part the hugely popular London Transport Museum. Covent Garden is a rejuvenated area, bars boutique shops and other new activities, the market, echoes in the memories of those who knew it thirty years ago,

Only in the north-western corner do you find traces of the place's first splendour as an open piazza; there, the flanking houses speak the original arcades of Inigo Jones's of the l630s, though not original. The design originally was a rectangle open to the south side, to the Thames (you can still catch a glimpse of the river beyond the Strand down Southampton Street) the north side was enclosed by terrace of houses, to the west Inigo Jones also built St Paul's, Covent Garden. The traditional story of the church's conception is, the developer, the Duke of Bedford, was not anxious to spend a great deal on it, and suggested to Inigo Jones that something not too far off a barn would not come amiss, he was promised him the grandest barn in Europe - and gave it to him, and at considerable cost. And (though its fabric is renewed) it still stands formidable, plain and solid under its great massive eaves - barn-like it is.

By the end of the seventeenth century Covent Garden was the most important London market for fruit and vegetables. So it came to dominate not only the market area but all the streets around, growing ever bigger, drawing in more and more traffic to itself, gradually, seizing up.

To visit St Paul's interior go west either by King Street or by Henrietta Street. The big gates into the churchyard are in Bedford Street, and the interior of the church almost disconcertingly plainly grand. There is a list of the famous buried here, artists like Grinling Gibbons and that opulent painter of the Restoration, Sir Peter Lely. Wycherley is here, carried from across Covent Garden, and on the south wall a silver casket holds the ashes of Ellen Terry. Here, too, J. M. W. Turner was baptised in 1775. Turner was born in Maiden Lane, a narrow passage just to the south off Bedford Street, at his father's barber's shop, now long since gone. Maiden Lane, however, still has, if by now you are seeking refreshment, the old fashioned theatrical restaurant Rules, here since 1798 and lists Henry Irving, William Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin in its long list of famous diners.


Author: Stan Everard 2005 (updated)

Approx 2 hours, you will have lot’s to see and look at, don't forget leave plenty of time to stop and look.

Start at Piccadilly Circus underground station. exit 4, on to Shaftesbury Ave.

London 's West End is known for its famous theatres, lively nightlife, and for its numerous places to eat, drink, and pass the time.


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Piccadilly Circus

Always busy, this is where the first large electric signs flashed over a hundred years ago. The statue of Eros. Behind it, the Criterion Brasserie has a glisttering mosaic ceiling (1870). Look up to spot figures of Mick Jagger and Elton John outside the London Pavilion, once a famous theatre. Next door another former theatre, the Trocadero, is now an entertainment, dining, and shopping complex. Walk straight through the Trocadero to Shaftesbury Ave and bear right.
Shaftesbury Avenue

Along the avenue the100-year-old Lyric Theatre and the Apollo, Gielgud, and Queen's theatres, create the heart of 'Theatreland'. Look up Rupert Street , between the Apollo and Gielgud, to see the busy street market. left on to Wardour St.
Soho

Although a notoriously sleazy 'red light" district, cafes, clubs, and restaurants now cater for the film, TV, and video industry concentrated here. The ashes of author Dorothy L Sayers interred in St Anne's Church which also holds the remains of Theodore, King of Corsica who, at his death (1736) gave up his kingdom 'for the use of his creditors'.

Turn right into Old Compton St.
Old Compton Street

Always bohemian, the scent of Parmesan cheese wafts from the Italian stores, when I was a lad to get anything “foreign” this is where you came, we insular Britain’s, recovering from the pasting taken in the second world war, we had few luxuries, or opportunities to experiment, with food we had tasted whist abroad. The smells continue roasting beans wafts among fresh Partially pedestrianised, it is also the heart of London 's gay community. Rock 'n' roll hopefuls Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele hung out in coffee bars here playing in skiffle groups in the mid1950s.

Continue along Old Compton St , to
Dean Street , Frith Street , and Greek Street

Soho has always drawn foreigners. Karl Marx lived above No. 26 Dean Street ; Mozart lived, played, and composed in Frith Street , opposite the jazz lovers' favourite club, Ronnie Scott's (No. 47) a super night out. Greek Street , named after refugees fleeing in the dark past, cross Shafteslniry Ave and wander down Charing Cross Rd
. Charing Cross Road

A converted church is now the popular Limelight nightclub; across the road specialist bookshops attract browsers. Unfortunately for fans of the film “ 84 Charing Cross Road ” it aint there thanks to developers.

Turn right up Newport Court , and then left into Gerrard St .
Chinatown Top

Chinese restaurants, clubs, and shops were here long ago, and there is even dual-language street signs to make Gerrard Street the centre of Chinatown, just feels a bit odd, London once removed.

Now left into Wardour St and left again into Swiss Court .

Author: Stan Everard 2005

Almost hidden is a reproduction galleon nestling amongst the buildings and is Southwark Bridge soon after on the same south side is Southwark Cathedral and nestling close by is the trendy Borough Market, a small detour out of the market and across the busy south bound Southwark Street is the Elizabethan INN "The George" a beer here in it's small galleried 16 century courtyard is a must! LOOK at the Southwark walk for more information here back to the river... and the bridge up next is a railway bridge, going in to Cannon St station after is London Bridge. Its medieval predecessor was a city road on the river, complete with taverns houses and shops, and the 1800’s replacement was moved stone-by-stone to a theme park in Arizona USA.

London Bridge to Tower Bridge
Almost hidden On the north bank left are two Wren-designed structures: the Monument to the Great Fire of London and, below, St Magnus the Martyr, traditionally the church of fishmongers. The former nearby market, Billingsgate, retains its gilded dolphin weathervane, although the fish merchants moved out in the1980’s on the south bank is the large HMS Belfast, opposite the Tower of London on the left, and Tower Bridge dead ahead.

Tower Bridge to the Thames Barrier
St Katharine Dock on the left and the Design Museum on the right mark the start of Docklands. The old docks have been cleaned up, warehouses restored, those that survived the bombing of world war 2, fell to developers, and house some impressive accommodation, and pubs rediscovered. Steep steps on both sides recall the days when the Thames was London's highway, hidden on the north bank is the river polices museum.

On the left, the Prospect of Whitby, long known to locals and now tourists who want the flavour of the past, and almost opposite on the right, the spot from where the Mayflower sailed to take the Pilgrim Fathers to the New World that is before stopping off at Plymouth, Devon. The Thames now loops around the Isle of Dogs, once one of London's poorest areas, and now dominated by Canary Wharf.