Soho is an area in the centre of the West End of London, England, in the City of Westminster. It is an area of approximately one square mile bounded by Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, Shaftesbury Avenue to the south and Charing Cross Road to the east. The area to the west is known as Mayfair, to the north Fitzrovia, to the east Holborn and Covent Garden, and to the south St James's. Chinatown and the area around Leicester Square can be considered as either just inside or just outside the southern edge of Soho.

History

The area which is now Soho was grazing farmland until 1536, when it was taken by Henry VIII as a royal park for the Palace of Whitehall. The name Soho first appears in the 17th century. Most authorities believe that the name derives from the old ‘soho!’ hunting call (Soho! There goes the fox!, etc.).The Duke of Monmouth used ‘soho’ as a rallying call for his men at the Battle of Sedgemoor, half a century after the name was first used for this area of London. The name may derive from a shortening of South Holborn. Holborn stems from the Anglo-Saxon holbourne (hollow bourne) meaning deep brook, referring to a stream that used to flow near where High Holborn and its continuation, Oxford Street are today (Oxford Street is the north boundary of Soho).

 

Map of Soho

In the 1660s the Crown granted Soho Fields to Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans. He leased 19 of its 22 acres to Joseph Girle, who as soon as he had gained permission to build there, promptly passed his lease and licence to bricklayer Richard Frith in 1677, who began its development. In 1698 William III granted the Crown freehold of most of this area to William, Earl of Portland. Meanwhile the southern part of what became the parish of St Anne Soho was sold by the Crown in parcels in the 16th and 17th century, with part going to Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester.

Despite the best intentions of landowners such as the Earls of Leicester and Portland to develop the land on the grand scale of neighbouring Bloomsbury, Marylebone and Mayfair, it never became a fashionable area for the rich, and immigrants settled in the area: the French church in Soho Square is witness to its position as a centre for French Huguenots in the 17th and 18th centuries. By the mid 1700s the aristocrats who had been living in Soho Square or Gerrard Street had moved away. Soho’s character stems partly from the ensuing neglect by rich and fashionable London, and its lack of development and redevelopment that characterizes its neighbouring areas.

By the mid 1800s all respectable families had moved away and prostitutes, music halls and small theatres had moved in. In the early 1900s there was a healthy mix of foreign nationals opening cheap eating-houses and it became a fashionable place to eat for intellectuals, writers and artists. From the 1930s to the early 1960s, Soho folklore states that the pubs of Soho were packed every night with drunken writers, poets and artists, many of whom never stayed sober long enough to become successful; and it was also during this period that the great Soho pub landlords established themselves.

John Snow

 

John Snow memorial, with John Snow pub shown in the background

A major event in the history of public health was the study of an 1854 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). Snow disabled the pump, thus ending the outbreak. A replica of the pump, with a memorial plaque, now stands near the location of the original pump next to the John Snow pub.

Soho today

Soho is a small, multicultural area of central London which is home to industry, commerce, culture and entertainment, as well as a residential area for both rich and poor.

 

The Admiral Duncan pub

It is famous for its many clubs, pubs, bars, restaurants, the handful of sex shops scattered amongst them, and late-night coffee shops that give the streets an "open all night" feel at the weekends. Many Soho weekends are busy enough to warrant closing off of some of the streets to vehicles; Westminster Council pedestrianised parts of Soho in the mid-1990s, but later removed much of it, apparently after complaints of loss of trade from some local businesses.

There are many record shops in the area around Berwick Street, where shops such as Blackmarket Records and Vinyl Junkies offer the latest releases. Soho is also the home of London's main gay village, around Old Compton Street, where there are dozens of businesses thriving on the pink pound. On April 30 1999, the Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton Street, which serves the gay community, was damaged by a nail bomb planted by neo-Nazi David Copeland. It left three dead (two of whom were heterosexual) and 30 injured.

 

Lee Ho Fook

Gerrard Street is the centre of London's Chinatown, a mix of import companies and restaurants (including Lee Ho Fook's, mentioned in Warren Zevon's song Werewolves of London). Several street festivals are held throughout the year, most notably on the Chinese New Year.

On Valentine's Day 2006, a campaign was launched to bring business back into the heart of Soho. The campaign, called I Love Soho, features a community-focused web-site (www.ilovesoho.co.uk). The campaign was launched at the site of Raymond Revue Bar in Walkers Court, with celebrities such as Charlotte Church, Amy Winehouse and Paris Hilton. I Love Soho is backed by the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, the Soho Society, Westminster Council and Visit London.

Theatre and film industry

Soho is near the heart of London's theatre area, and is a centre of the independent film and video industry as well as the television and film post-production industry. It is home to Soho Theatre, built in 2000 to present new plays and stand-up comedy. 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 rooftop laser telecommunication beams, and below ground level with fiber optics making up 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 City, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Wellington, New Zealand.

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

 

Agent Provocateur, 6 Broadwick Street

The Soho area has been at the heart of London's sex industry for at least 200 years. By the 1950s, the area had several brothels and by 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 large 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, but simultaneously accepting "back-handers" or bribes.

By the 1980s, purges of the police force along with a tightening of licensing controls by the City of Westminster led to a crackdown on these illegal premises. By 2000, a substantial relaxation of general censorship, and the licensing or closing of unlicensed sex shops had reduced the red-light area to just a small area around Brewer Street and Berwick Street. Several 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 paying for absurdly over-priced drinks and very mild 'erotic entertainment'. Prostitution is still widespread in parts of Soho, with several buildings used as brothels, and there is a persistent problem with drug dealing on some street corners.

Soho has, however, never lost its hardy residential community; and it includes Soho Primary School on Great Windmill Street for local children. Its varied and cosmopolitan nature means that Soho does not have the character of a red light district