Soho
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- For other uses, see Soho (disambiguation).
| Ordnance Survey | |
|---|---|
| OS grid reference: | Maps for TQ295815 |
| Administration | |
| London borough: | Westminster |
| Area: | Greater London |
| Region: | London |
| Nation: | England |
| Other | |
| Ceremonial county: | Greater London |
| Traditional county: | Middlesex |
| Police force: | Metropolitan Police |
| Post office and telephone | |
| Post town: | LONDON |
| Postcode: | W1 |
| Dialling code: | 020 |
| Politics | |
| UK Parliament: | Cities of London and Westminster |
| London Assembly: | West Central London |
| European Parliament: | London |
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Soho is an area of London's West End in the City of Westminster. It is roughly the area bounded by Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square to the south, and Charing Cross Road in the east. The area to the west is known as Mayfair.
Contents |
History
Soho is named after a hunting cry, dating back to the time when Soho was a small village on the outskirts of a London surrounded by fields. Its name is deliberately imitated by Soho, Hong Kong, one of the main tourist areas on Hong Kong Island. SoHo, New York is named because the area is South of Houston Street in lower Manhattan. Beijing Soho (JianWai SoHo) stands for Small Office (Home Office).
A major event in the history of public health was the study of an outbreak of cholera in Soho by Dr. John Snow. He identified the cause of the outbreak as the public water pump in Broadwick Street (then named Broad Street), and disabled it, thus ending the outbreak. A replica of the water pump, with a memorial plaque, stands near the location of the original pump (next to the John Snow pub).
On April 30 1999 at about 18:30, the Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton Street which serves the gay community was shaken by a nail bomb, planted by neo-Nazi David Copeland, which left three dead and thirty injured.
Bohemian Soho
Soho is a multicultural area which is home to industry, commerce, culture and entertainment, as well as a residential area for both rich and poor. For centuries it has housed waves of immigrants: the French church in Soho Square is witness to its position as a centre for French Huguenots in the 17th and 18th centuries and a number of local businesses reflect its position in the mid twentieth century as a centre for Italian immigrants.
Soho has many clubs, bars, and restaurants, as well as late night coffee shops that give the street an "open all night" feel at the weekends. Indeed, most Soho weekends are now so busy as to warrant closing-off of some of the streets. This idea was tried for a brief period in the mid-1990s, but Westminster Council later removed most of the pedestrianisation supposedly after complaints from some local businesses about loss of trade!
There are many record shops in the area, specifically around Berwick Street, where shops such as Blackmarket Records and Vinyl Junkies dish out the freshest grooves.
Soho is also notable as the home of London's main gay village, centred on Old Compton Street. The area has been gay-friendly for many years, but this really took off in the early 1990s, and there are now dozens of gay bars and businesses all vying for the pink pound.
London's Chinatown is centred on Gerrard Street and is a mix of restaurants (including Lee Ho Fook's made famous in Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London) and import companies. Several festivals are held throughout the year including the Chinese New Year.
Theatre and film industry
Soho is by the heart of London's theatre area, and a centre of the independent film and video industry, as well as the television and film post-production industry. The British Board of Film Classification, formerly known as the British Board of Film Censors, can be found in Soho Square.
Soho is criss-crossed by the rooftop free-space communications laser beams, and at ground level with the fiber, of Sohonet, which connects the Soho media and post-production community to British film studio locations such as Pinewood Studios and Shepperton Studios, and to other major production centres such as Rome, New York, Los Angeles and Australia, as well as providing a direct link to New Zealand's production centres.
There are also plans by Westminster Council to deploy pervasive high-bandwidth Wi-Fi networks in Soho as part of a program to further encourage the development of the area as a centre for media and technology industries.
Soho and the sex industry
The Soho area has been at the heart of Britain's sex industry for at least 50 years. In the 1970s, in an area stretching from Chinatown along Wardour Street, and up Old Compton Street, there were over 250 unlicensed sex shops, cinemas, clip joints and illegal bars, a number of brothels and many freelance prostitutes either soliciting on the street or offering their services from staircases with doors open to the street. The Metropolitan Police Vice Squad at this time suffered from several corrupt police officers involved with enforcing organised crime control of the area.
By the 1980s purges of the police force along with tightening of controls by the City of Westminster led to a crackdown on illegal premises. By the year 2000 a relaxing of censorship and the licensing or closing of unlicensed sex shops had reduced the area to around Brewer Street and Berwick Street. Still, several of the strip clubs in the area were reported in London's Evening Standard newspaper in February 2003 to be rip-offs (known as 'clip joints'), aiming to intimidate customers into handing over their money and valuables. Prostitution is still widespread in parts of Soho, with many buildings used as brothels, and there is a persistent problem with drug dealing on some street corners.
It has, however, never lost its hardy residential community; and it includes Soho Primary School on Great Windmill Street which is attended by the local children.
Notable places in Soho
- Carnaby Street fashionable clothes shopping area.
- Leicester Square is a major tourist landmark
- Piccadilly Circus is another major tourist landmark
- Golden Square is a small but attractive urban square
- Soho Square is a tiny and beautiful park
- Berwick Street Market is a small street market open from Monday to Saturday.
- The Raymond Revuebar was London's first legal strip club, in 1952.
- The Coach and Horses is a public house notable for playing host to a number of well-known Soho personalities, including Jeffrey Bernard and the staff of Private Eye magazine.
Nearest places
- Fitzrovia
- Mayfair
- Bloomsbury
- Holborn
- Marylebone
- West End (In the narrowest sense of the entertainment district around Leicester Square. By most other definitions Soho is part of the West End itself.)
- Covent Garden
Nearest tube stations
- Oxford Circus tube station
- Piccadilly Circus tube station
- Tottenham Court Road tube station
- Leicester Square tube station
Major streets in or bordering Soho
- Charing Cross Road is famous for its bookstores.
- Oxford Street is one of London's major shopping streets.
- Regent Street is a major shopping street, named after the Prince Regent, later King George IV
- Shaftesbury Avenue has London's main concentration of theatres along its length.
- Old Compton Street is the core of Soho's gay village.
- Wardour Street was the centre of the old British film industry, and is still the home of much of the current film industry.
- Dean Street where Karl Marx used to live
- Frith Street where John Logie Baird first demonstrated television
- Gerrard Street is the centre of London's Chinatown.
- Berwick Street
- the shopping street of Carnaby Street was an icon of 1960s "Swinging London"
