• At the end of Meard Street turn right into Wardour Street... 

 

Until the 1600s, much of this area was hunting and arable land. Huntsmen on the chase cried out “So-ho” – perhaps a form of “tally-ho” – giving the area its name. Later in the century, a group of individual building tradesmen laid out thoroughfares across Soho and built houses on them. On one of the streets running north–south, Treasury official Sir Archibald Wardour had several houses built on his land. By 1740, the street had been named after him.

 

Wardour Street became a centre for furniture makers, antique dealers, musicians and book publishers. Today it is the focus for advertising, film and media companies. Many of the buildings are recently built or developed, and are often residential on the upper floors. Soho still has a significant residential population. 

 

Look out for the Westminster Council blue plaque at 90 Wardour Street celebrating the life of the legendary rock drummer, Keith Moon of ‘The Who', performers here at the site of the Marquee Club in the 1960s. 

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163 Wardour Street has a blue plaque celebrating the life of the famous furniture designer Thomas Sheraton. Born at Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, Sheraton had little education and worked at first as a journeyman cabinetmaker. He went to London about 1790 and is said to have "supported himself, a wife, and two children by his exertions as an author." In 1799 Sheraton left to become a Baptist minister in Yorkshire until 1802.  ///colleague.dull.wake

 

Sheraton's most important publication, 'The Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book', was issued in 49 separate parts between 1791 and 1794. His ideas represented an advance on the neo-classic designs of Robert Adam and George Hepplewhite, being more elegant in the square shaped chair backs and mirror frames.