London Guide
Soho
When Soho – named after the cry that resounded through the district when it was a popular place for rabbit hunting – was built over in the seventeenth century, its streets were among the most sought-after addresses in the capital. Princes, dukes and earls built their mansions around Soho and Leicester squares, which became the centre of high-society nightlife, epitomized by Viennese prima donna Theresa Cornelys' wild masquerades, which drew "a riotous assembly of fashionable people of both sexes", a traffic jam of hackney chairs and a huge crowd of onlookers.
By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the party was over, the rich moved west, and Soho began its inexorable descent into poverty and overcrowding. Even before the last aristocrats left, Soho had become one of the city's main dumping grounds for immigrants. French Huguenots were followed by Italians, Irish, Jews, and eventually the Chinese.
Soho's reputation for tolerance also made it an obvious place of refuge from dour, postwar Britain. Jazz and skiffle proliferated in the 1950s, folk and rock in the 1960s, and punk at the end of the 1970s. Soho's artistic (and alcoholic) cliques still gather here and the media, film and advertising industries have a strong presence. The attraction, though, remains in the unique mix of people who drift through Soho. There's nowhere else in the city where such diverse slices of London come face to face: businessmen, clubbers, drunks, theatregoers, fashion victims, market-stallholders, pimps, prostitutes and politicians. Take it all in, and enjoy – for better or worse, most of London is not like this.