• From Piccadilly Circus station take Exit 4 (Trocadero & Shaftesbury Avenue) up to Piccadilly Circus.

 

This area was known in 1626 as Pickadilly Hall, after the house belonging to one Robert Baker, a tailor famous for selling piccadillies or collars. By 1692 it was known as Portugal Street in honour of Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese queen consort (wife) of King Charles II of England, but it had finally become Piccadilly by 1743.  ///grid.income.marker

 

The circus was created in 1819, at the junction with Regent Street (to your right), to the plans of the famous architect John Nash on the site of a house and garden belonging to a Lady Hutton.  

 

Lying at the centre of Theatreland, the circus junction has always been a very popular and busy traffic interchange since it was constructed. The first electric advertisements appeared on buildings here in 1910 and, from 1923, electric billboards were set up on the facade of the London Pavilion (part of the Trocadero).

 

The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain (with the statue popularly known as Eros) was erected in the circus in 1893 to commemorate the philanthropic works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. 

 

• Walk along Coventry Street to look at the  Prince of Wales Theatre to view Lord Delfont’s blue plaque, then re-trace your steps back to Great Windmill Street.  ///hours.next.pays

 

• Turn right into Great Windmill Street between the old London Pavilion building and the Trocadero (noting the plaque here) and cross Shaftesbury Avenue.

 

Shaftesbury Avenue, named after the  7th Earl, was built between 1877 and 1886 as part of a measure to clear out the St. Giles’ rookery. At this time London was a thriving city, but rapid expansion encouraged the growth of crime close to many prosperous areas where the narrow alleys, streets and courts formed evil-smelling, densely-populated, slums known as rookeries.   ///wiping.foal.wounds

 

The architect, George Vulliamy, and the engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, intended Shaftesbury Avenue to provide a north-south traffic artery through the overcrowded districts of St. Giles and Soho. It is generally considered to be the heart of London's West End theatre district, and is also the beginning of the London Chinatown.