Tottenham Court Road

WC in Great Marlborough Street at the junction with Carnaby Street

Soho is a multicultural area and home to industry, commerce and entertainment, as well as a residential area. It is famous for its many clubs, pubs, bars, restaurants and late-night coffee shops that give the streets an open all night feel. Its narrow streets have long been popular with immigrants seeking refuge, and over the years they have included Flemish weavers, French Huguenots, Greeks, Italians, Chinese and Russian Jews. Their influence is still felt in the restaurants and shops of the area.

The area was originally grazing land, before King Henry VIII took it over, during the 16th century. He made it into Royal Hunting Grounds as part of the Palace of Whitehall. The name Soho originates from this time, from the old hunting call SoHo There goes the fox! used by the Duke of Monmouth. In the 1660s the Crown granted Soho Fields to Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans. Most of the land was leased to bricklayer Richard Frith in 1677, who began its development.

Despite the best of intentions to develop the land on a grand scale, it never became a fashionable area for the rich. By the mid 1800s the aristocrats and respectable families had moved away and prostitutes, music halls and small theatres had moved in. In the early 1900s foreign nationals opened cheap eating-houses and it became a fashionable place for intellectuals, writers and artists. Soho folklore states that the pubs of Soho were packed every night with the drunken bunch of these, many of whom never stayed sober long enough to become successful. Despite this, Thomas Gainsborough, Francis Bacon, Oscar Wilde and Mozart, all spent time in Soho.

Soho has been at the heart of London's sex industry for at least 200 years, with many unlicensed shops, theatres and bars. Most of these have now been pushed into the side streets, due to stronger policing and tighter licensing controls. You can still find venues for drag artists and transvestites that have been going long enough to have become almost respectable. Many of Soho’s attractive bars and restaurants are designed for the gay crowd, but draw visitors of all kinds.

Many famous people are associated with Soho. The John Snow pub in Broadwick Street commemorates the surgeon who in 1854 discovered the link between a Soho cholera epidemic and water drunk from a nearby well. The well was closed and the spread of the disease stopped. John Snow went on to pioneer anaesthetic and administered chloroform to Queen Victoria during the birth of her son in 1853.

In a Firth Street attic workshop in 1925, John Logie Baird transmitted the first ever television images. He was so excited at seeing his test dummy head, that he rushed downstairs and grabbed a 15 year old boy called William Taynton, who became the first person ever to appear on television.

Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club

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