West London Removals: Removals Soho
Removals, Storage, Man and Van Hire and House Clearance in Soho and W1, West London.
Allen & Young are a Moving and Storage Company based in North West London and we regularly move clients to and from the Soho area. We offer Removals, Storage, Packing Services, Man and Van Hire, House Clearance and Removal packaging such as boxes, tape and bubble wrap can also be purchased though our site. We also provide a full range of Business Services such as office moves, light haulage, furniture delivery and assembly. Although offer the full range of removal services and frequently undertake large moves, we specialise in light and medium sized removals, perfect for apartments, flats, studios, bedsits, houses and moving offices. In addition we offer some specialist removal services such as comprehensive relocations for senior citizens planning to move into residential care homes, nursing homes or sheltered accommodation in Soho.
If you need a remover, a man and van, some storage, packing or house clearance in the Soho area, simply call or email Allen and Young today.
About Soho
Soho is an area in the centre of the West End of London in the City of Westminster and located in postal district W1. Allen and Young Ltd regularly carry out all moving services including removals, man and van, storage, packing and house clearance in the Soho area. It is an entertainment district which for much of the later part of the 20th century had a reputation for its sex shops as well as its night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s the area has undergone considerable transformation and is now a fashionable district of upmarket restaurants and media offices with only a small remnant of “sex industry” venues in the west of the area.
Soho has an area of approximately one square mile and may be thought of as bounded by Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, Leicester Square to the south and Charing Cross Road to the east. However apart from Oxford Street, all of these roads are nineteenth century metropolitan improvements, so they are not Soho’s original boundaries, and it has never been an administrative unit, with formally defined boundaries. The area to the west is known as Mayfair, to the north Fitzrovia, to the east St Giles’s and Covent Garden, and to the south St James’s. According to the Soho Society, Chinatown, the area between Leicester Square to the south and Shaftesbury Avenue to the north is part of Soho, although some consider it a separate area.
The area which is now Soho was grazing farmland until 1536, when it was taken by Henry VIII as a royal park for the Palace of Whitehall. The name “Soho” first appears in the 17th century. Most authorities believe that the name derives from the old “soho!” hunting call (“Soho! There goes the fox!” etc.). The Duke of Monmouth used “soho” as a rallying call for his men at the Battle of Sedgemoor, half a century after the name was first used for this area of London.
In the 1660s the Crown granted Soho Fields to Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans. He leased 19 of its 22 acres to Joseph Girle, who as soon as he had gained permission to build there, promptly passed his lease and licence to bricklayer Richard Frith in 1677, who began its development. In 1698 William III granted the Crown freehold of most of this area to William, Earl of Portland. Meanwhile the southern part of what became the parish of St Anne Soho was sold by the Crown in parcels in the 16th and 17th century, with part going to Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester.
Despite the best intentions of landowners such as the Earls of Leicester and Portland to develop the land on the grand scale of neighbouring Bloomsbury, Marylebone and Mayfair, it never became a fashionable area for the rich, and immigrants settled in the area: the French church in Soho Square is witness to its position as a centre for French Huguenots in the 17th and 18th centuries. By the mid 1700s the aristocrats who had been living in Soho Square or Gerrard Street had moved away.
By the mid 1800s all respectable families had moved away and prostitutes, music halls and small theatres had moved in. In the early 1900s foreign nationals opened cheap eating-houses and it became a fashionable place to eat for intellectuals, writers and artists. From the 1930s to the early 1960s, Soho folklore states that the pubs of Soho were packed every night with drunken writers, poets and artists, many of whom never stayed sober long enough to become successful; and it was also during this period that the Soho pub landlords established themselves.
A detailed mural depicting a variety of Soho characters including writer Dylan Thomas and jazz musician George Melly is in Broadwick Street, at the junction with Carnaby Street. The Soho name has been imitated by other entertainment and restaurant districts such as Soho, Hong Kong, SoHo, New York, and Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires. Read more…
