Old Compton Street
Encyclopedia
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
History
The street was named after Henry Compton. who raised funds for a local parish church, eventually dedicated as St Anne's Church in 1686. The area in general and this street in particular became populated by FrenchFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
refugees after Charles II
Charles II of England
Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...
gave protection to Protestants in 1681.
By the end of the 18th century, fewer than ten of the houses were without shop fronts. In the middle of the 19th century, while there were some workshops too, as well as restaurants and public houses, the ground floors of most of the houses were still used as shops. The number of foreign occupants continued to grow and the street became a recognised meeting place for exiles, particularly those from France: after the suppression in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
of the Paris Commune
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
, the poets Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
and Paul Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
often frequented drinking haunts here.
As might be expected of one of London's more entertaining districts, Old Compton Street had its resident curiosity in the form of Wombwell's Menagerie. George Wombwell
George Wombwell
George Wombwell, , was a famous menagerie exhibitor in the Victorian Britain. He founded Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie.-Life and work:...
kept a boot and shoe shop on the street between 1804 and 1810 and by all accounts was quite an entrepreneur. Dwarf-like and a drunk he nonetheless built up three hugely successful menageries from a starting point of two snakes bought at a bargain price. The menageries travelled the length and breadth of England and made him a wealthy man before his death in 1850.
Between 1956 and 1970, the 2 I's Coffee Bar was located here. Many well-known 1960s pop musicians played in its cramped surroundings.
Current
Today, the street is the centre of LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's gay community
Gay community
The gay community, or LGBT community, is a loosely defined grouping of LGBT and LGBT-supportive people, organizations and subcultures, united by a common culture and civil rights movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality...
. In the middle of Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
, it features several gay bar
Gay bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...
s, restaurant
Restaurant
A restaurant is an establishment which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services...
s and cafés
Coffeehouse
A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on...
, as well as a popular theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
. Whilst a pedestrianisation project proved unpopular with local traders and was reversed, the street is closed to vehicular traffic for the Soho Pride festival one weekend each year, in late summer. The street also is home to some of Soho's most popular sex shops Clonezone, Soho Original Books and Janus.
The Prince Edward Theatre
Prince Edward Theatre
The Prince Edward Theatre is a West End theatre situated on Old Compton Street, just north of Leicester Square, in the City of Westminster.The theatre was designed in 1930 by Edward A. Stone, with an interior designed by Marc-Henri Levy and Gaston Laverdet...
is located on the east end of the street. Until 2004, the long-running production of Mamma Mia!
Mamma Mia!
Mamma Mia! is a stage musical written by British playwright Catherine Johnson, based on the songs of ABBA, composed by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, former members of the band. Although the title of the musical is taken from the group's 1975 chart-topper "Mamma Mia", the plot is fictional, not...
, a musical based upon the songs of ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...
was showing at the theatre. When Mamma Mia! moved to larger premises in another part of the West End, a production of Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins (musical)
Mary Poppins is a Walt Disney Theatrical musical based on the similarly titled series of children's books by P. L. Travers and the Disney 1964 film. The West End production opened in December 2004 and received two Olivier Awards, one for Best Actress in a Musical and the other for Best Theatre...
moved in but closed in 2008. It's now home to "Jersey Boys" - a play about the lives of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. London producer and director Adam Spreadbury-Maher
Adam Spreadbury-Maher
Adam Spreadbury-Maher is a multi-award winning Australian/Irish theatre artistic director, producer and translator. He is the founding Artistic Director of London's Cock Tavern Theatre from January 2009 until the venues closure in April 2011. He became Artistic Director of the Kings Head Theatre...
lives on the northern end of Old Compton Street.
In 1999 the Admiral Duncan pub
Admiral Duncan pub
The Admiral Duncan is a pub in Old Compton Street, Soho in the heart of London's gay district. It is named after Admiral Adam Duncan, who defeated the Dutch fleet at the Battle of Camperdown in 1797.- Bombing :...
was the site of a nail bomb
Nail bomb
The nail bomb is an anti-personnel explosive device packed with nails to increase its wounding ability. The nails act as shrapnel, leading almost certainly to greater loss of life and injury in inhabited areas than the explosives alone would. The nail bomb is also a type of flechette weapon...
attack which killed three people and injured over a dozen. A neo-nazi, David Copeland
David Copeland
David John Copeland is a former member of the British National Party and the National Socialist Movement, who became known as the "London Nail Bomber" after a 13-day bombing campaign in April 1999 aimed at London's black, Bangladeshi and gay communities.Over three successive weekends between 17...
, was subsequently found guilty of the bombing
(intended specifically to injure members of the gay community). Previously decorated in neutral colours, the Admiral Duncan was re-opened with a flamboyant pink and purple exterior with a large gay pride
Gay pride
LGBT pride or gay pride is the concept that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity...
rainbow flag flying outside, which has remained there ever since, in defiance of Westminster City Council's planning permission laws.
Gay bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...
s, including Comptons of SOHO
Comptons of SOHO
Comptons of Soho is a gay pub in London. Situated at 51-53 Old Compton Street in the heart of Soho's 'Gay village', Comptons has been an integral part of London's gay scene since June 1986.-History:...
and G-A-Y
G-A-Y
G-A-Y is a gay nightclub in London. It operated from the London Astoria music venue for 15 years until July 2008. The Boston Globe described it as "London's largest gay-themed club night", NME reported that it "attracts 6,000 clubbers each week", and The Independent described it as "the one London...
bar. Also on the street are a variety of cafés, tea rooms (included a branch of the renowned Patisserie Valerie) and restaurants (including Bincho
Bincho
Bincho, also known as Bincho Yakitori, is a London-based Japanese restaurant styled on the traditional izakayas found throughout Japan. Yakitori, literally translated as "grilled bird", is prepared on skewers and cooked over dense coals known as Bincho-tan made from Oak...
, London's only authentic yakitori restaurant, and Balans, which unusually for much of England is open 24 hours a day), and a variety of sex shop
Sex shop
A sex shop, erotic shop is a shop that sells products related to adult sexual or erotic entertainment, such as sex toys, lingerie, clothing, pornography, and other related products...
s. Old Compton Street is also the home of some of London's film and video post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
houses.
An interesting local feature can be found in the middle of Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus and then becomes Tottenham Court Road...
at its junction with Old Compton Street. Beneath the grill http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/3289/12as4.jpg in the traffic island in the middle of the road, can be seen the old road signs http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/9898/29mk1.jpg for the now vanished Little Compton Street, which once joined Old Compton Street with New Compton Street.
Adjoining streets
From west to east:- Wardour StreetWardour StreetWardour Street is a street in Soho, London. It is a one-way street south to north from Leicester Square, up through Chinatown, across Shaftesbury Avenue to Oxford Street.-History:...
- Dean StreetDean StreetDean Street is a street in Soho, London, England, running between Oxford Street to the north and Shaftesbury Avenue to the south.-Historical figures:The street has a rich history. In 1764 a young Mozart gave a recital at 21 Dean Street...
- Frith StreetFrith StreetFrith Street is in the Soho area of London, England. To the north is Soho Square and to the south is Shaftesbury Avenue. The street crosses Old Compton Street, Bateman Street and Romilly Street.- History :...
- Greek StreetGreek StreetGreek Street is a street in Soho, London, leading south from Soho Square to Shaftesbury Avenue. The street is famous for its restaurants and cosmopolitan nature.-History:...
- Charing Cross RoadCharing Cross RoadCharing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus and then becomes Tottenham Court Road...
- Little Compton Street (now defunct)
Traffic and Pedestrian Issues
Night-time traffic surveys carried by Westminster Council (www3.westminster.gov.uk/docstores/.../SOHO_ENTS_SPG_july_2006.pdf) between 10pm and 4am indicate that Old Compton Street, Dean Street, and Frith Street experienced the highest levels of traffic within the Soho area.The busiest location was Old Compton Street between the junctions with Dean and Frith Street, which experienced ‘medium’ levels of traffic for four of the six hours of the survey, including between 2am and 4am.
Westminster Council stated that the narrow footways can become very congested at night, particularly at weekends, with people drinking in the street, eating outside takeaways, queuing at entertainment venues or to use bank ATMs, and people passing through the area. There are a number of premises with tables and chairs located on restricted pavement areas and this can cause a conflict between pedestrians and traffic.
In order to satisfactorily accommodate the number of visitors to the area, a campaign was established early in 2010 (www.savingsoho.co.uk) seeking to implement pedestrian priority works in this sensitive historic area.
External links
- LondonTown.com information
- Panoramic view at the junction with Dean Street
- Discovering Old Compton Street and New Compton Street
- Compton Street, Old and New