walk/tour
4 Soho Place, Charing Cross Road, W1D 3BG
Discover Soho in the 1700s and 1800s - a place of bawdy houses, body snatchers and benevolent doctors who rubbed along together in alleyways and elegant townhouses. Soho’s narrow streets have been blighted by cholera and seen some of the country’s first specialist hospitals. Many of its buildings escaped the bombing of WWll and at least in part can be seen today.
Tottenham Court Road
Meet at @sohoplace theatre, 4 Soho Pl, Charing Cross. Walk ends in Soho Square which is near Tottenham Court Tube station.
Underground car park with lift access (Q-Park Soho), Poland Street with Blue Badge bays. One set of steps -under 10 Mentions sex and gore
Walking on narrow roads. Not much seating opportunity.
About The Tour
In Henry Vlll's time in the 1500s Soho was all green fields - it was his royal hunting ground.
It was only developed after the Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed most of the City. Built initially for the rich, it soon became home to those from Europe fleeing persecution and poverty.
By the 1800s there were 327 inhabitants per acre making it one of the most densely populated areas in London.
There was poverty, ill health and one in five women worked in the sex industry.
Come and see the sites of some of Soho's nameless and most desperate people of the 1700s and 1800s.
On this walking tour we find the doorways with stories behind them.
We cover just over a mile of Soho, from a workhouse, to a picnic spot beneath which lies a secret, to the first anatomy school in London, to the pump whose water killed 500 people in two weeks, before taking in a 'magical brothel', the stories of prominent "devotees of Venus" and visiting the sites of the first speciality hospitals in London that cared for women and those with the 'foul' disease.
We start at @sohoplace theatre at 4 Soho Place, Charing Cross Road, London W1D 3BG.
There will be some sexual content (historical and tasteful) and some gore. It will be funny and moving - sometimes at the same time.
I'm Luisa Dillner, a qualified Westminster Guide, former doctor and health editor at the Guardian, and English graduate.
I run Lou's London Walks which offers fun (with facts) walks, sharing things you might not notice and telling stories you'll remember.
I've lived and worked in London most of my life and learn a bit more about this wonderful city and enjoy it more every day.
Contact me at: louslondonwalks@gmail.com
The walk will take two hours and will be just over one mile. The pavements are narrow and there is one set of not-too-many steps.
The walk finishes in Soho Square which is close to where we start - so near tubes, buses and Tottenham Court road.
We don't enter any buildings.
The walk starts at @sohoplace theatre which is at 4 Soho Place, Charing Cross Rd, London W1D 3BG.
If you're coming to Tottenham Court Road tube station the best exit is exit one.
