by Pip Granger
Russell’s plans for Covent Garden were, however, upset by the Civil War. The gentry did not take up tenancies as the Earl had hoped, as it was not safe for Royalists to linger in London. Less exalted tenants were sought and found for the Piazza, and a bustling market developed on its south side. Property development virtually ceased in the nascent West End during the hostilities and the Commonwealth period that followed. When it finally resumed in the eighteenth century, the gentry preferred the exclusivity offered by the squares further to the west of Covent Garden’s Piazza and its environs.
By 1776, an anonymous writer, referring to the Piazza, could declare that ‘One might imagine that all the prostitutes of the Kingdom had pitched upon this blessed neighbourhood’*, which shows just how low the area had sunk when compared with the fourth Earl’s lofty ambitions. And thank goodness for that, because it created a vibrant neighbourhood, rich in contrasts and interest, that never existed in snooty old Mayfair. Over the years, a whole variety of businesses would settle there and thrive, including the produce market, which soon took on a wholesale rather than retail character, publishing houses, printing works, saddlers, coach builders and so much more.
Theatres, coffee houses, taverns and other places of entertainment were built there, initiating the idea that Up West was where Londoners went for a good time and adding immeasurably to the colour of the place. By the nineteenth century, the burgeoning market, as well as the various commercial enterprises and factories that had moved there, required a large workforce, and this in turn created a great demand for places to live. By the middle of the century, the ordered Piazza and the streets around it had long been surrounded by a hotchpotch of houses, narrow alleys and dingy courts that had grown organically over the previous century. When one hovel fell down – which they did remarkably frequently – another two were built on its footprint. The Covent Garden area contained dwellings for every station in life, from the great houses of the aristocracy along the Strand to truly miserable shacks, shanties and tenements for the lowly. The ‘rookeries’ around Seven Dials and St Giles church were one of London’s most notorious slum areas, where life expectancy was unusually low and infant mortality unusually high even for the times. This state of affairs lasted late in to Victoria’s reign, when the slums were razed and new, wide streets, befitting the capital of the world’s greatest empire were built.
The development of Soho did not have the cohesive initial vision that created Covent Garden, and so it grew in a more organic manner right from the start. In many ways this was an advantage. Although Soho was never as grand as Covent Garden, it never degenerated to the extent that its eastern neighbour did.
The first explosion in property development in Soho came in the fifty years following the Great Fire of London in 1666. The Fire rendered hordes of people homeless, and enterprising types saw a business opportunity in rebuilding houses and business premises to replace those lost. Many men were instrumental in the development of the area, and they have been immortalized in the streets that they named after themselves and their craftsmen – Gerrard Street, Wardour Street, Whitcomb Street, Sutton Court, Lexington Street and Beak Street, to name but a few. Few of these men were landed gentry. They were novices in the building industry, chancers who saw a way to make a few bob. Courtiers and craftsmen began to form partnerships. The former had clout at court, and were able to get the required permission to build, for a price, while the craftsmen could assemble teams with the required skills – bricklaying, plastering, woodworking, paving, roofing – to get the places up and running.
Because the initial building frenzy had been so hurried, much of the stock soon needed replacing. Building and reconstruction work continued into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which accounts for the Georgian character of so much of Soho. The new streets boasted every kind of dwelling, from mansions for a royal bastard, the Duke of Monmouth, on Soho Square and slightly lesser gentry in Leicester Square, to courts and tenements for skilled workers, unskilled labourers, artists and artisans.
And skilled and unskilled workers arrived in their thousands, according to Richard Tames’s Soho Past. He quotes a survey conducted in the 1890s, which estimated that there were more than four thousand foreigners living in Soho’s square half-mile, comprising Germans, French, Italians, Poles, Swiss, Russians, Belgians, Swedes, Austrians, Dutch, Americans, Spaniards, Hungarians, Danes, Turks, Greeks, Portuguese, Romanians and Africans. The countries of origin of the last-named were unspecified, Africa being much of a muchness to the Victorians, apparently. Added to the list were a couple of Persians and a solitary Serb. The Chinese had not yet arrived; they began to trickle in to south Soho after the Second World War, then poured in during the sixties.
Like other migrants before them, they brought their delicious food and colourful customs with them. The Camisa family, for example, were immigrants from Italy who have been bringing a taste of Italy to Soho for more than eighty years: ‘My father and his brother came over in about 1920, when my father was thirteen and his brother sixteen,’ remembered Alberto. ‘There was no work in Italy. My aunt was over already, because she married one of the Parmigianis, who came from the same village in Italy, Tarsogno – in Parma ham country. My father was the baby of the family, number thirteen. It took them four days on the train to get here, across Europe; they did not know the language and had no money. They came to Soho because somebody from the village was already there.’
It is remarkable just how many of the immigrants listed in the Victorian survey have descendants still living in Soho. In a few cases, they are still beavering away in the same occupations and trades their ancestors brought from their homelands. Skills have been handed down through the generations. This is particularly true of catering, specialist shops such as delicatessens, wine merchants and pâtisseries, and the rag trade, but it was, in the past, true of all sorts of other highly skilled crafts.
It has been estimated that in the early eighteenth century some 40 per cent of Soho’s population were French Protestants, known as Huguenots, who were escaping from religious persecution in their native land. They made and traded in tapestries and clothing in fine silks and wool, were silversmiths and jewellers, made clocks and watches, and sold wine, coffee and pastries. Jews fleeing persecutions and pogroms in eastern Europe brought expert tailoring, among other things, while German refugees made and repaired musical instruments, the Italians and French brought good food and wine, and the Swiss, like the French, were known for their clocks, watches and scientific instruments.
For many, this cosmopolitan mix was the heart of the place. John Carnera came to Soho as a seven-year-old from Italy. ‘I could not speak English. It was a new world to me, like being on a different planet. It was only when I went to school that I started to learn English, and in those days we all spoke Italian at home. It was a very happy time for me. I always felt that the best place I ever lived in my life was Soho. It was adventurous; in those days it was simple, and most of the people were foreign – they were either Italian, Spanish, French, lots of Maltese – so they were all immigrants anyway.’
Ronnie Mann’s family had a long history in the West End. ‘I think our lot came over from Germany in about 1800, from what I can gather; we traced them back to Petworth in Surrey. Apparently they come over to help the local farm, tend the cattle, whatever.’ By 1849, the Manns were in business in Covent Garden, and the extended family assimilated people from all over Europe. ‘My brother-in-law’s name is Broulier; they were French Huguenots and came over centuries ago. My uncle’s Schrader, his family’s German; they came over in about 1900. My aunt’s father was a Russian Jew from God knows where after the pogroms; a tailor, he was. My mate Roy Harris, his family is Jewish. His name’s not Harris – he told me it once, and I was pissing myself laughing – but he was like us, he had no concept of where he came from, or of his religion being important; he was just born into it.’
Pepe Rush’s father was born in Soho. Despite his English-sounding na
me, his family also came from far-flung parts. ‘When my grandad first came over, he went into the Post Office, and they asked him his name, and he told them [makes growling, consonantal noise], and they said “Where are you from?” “I am from Rooossia!” “OK, we’ll call you Rush then.”’
Sonia Boulter, another interviewee, told me that she ‘was born in Newport Place, just behind Shaftesbury Avenue. Both of my parents grew up there, too. They went to school together, and eventually married. My mother’s parents were immigrants from Italy, about 1900. I’m not too sure about my father’s parents, but have always believed my grandmother was French and grandfather English. My Italian grandmother got killed during the Blitz, and my grandfather died when I was about sixteen. He couldn’t speak a word of English. Not a word.’
It wasn’t just Europeans who were pouring in to the West End during the post-war period. Meru Ullah wrote to me that ‘My father was the first Bangladeshi to settle in the Seven Dials, and our house, 52 Neal Street, was a place where all immigrants entering London would aim for. From there, they would move to the Midlands.’
I first experienced the West End as a visitor, when my father took me with him on his forays in to Soho to pursue his dream of being a writer. The place seemed remarkable and very different to me, even as a toddler. The sense of ‘specialness’ that hung around Soho could be intoxicating. Paul C, who grew up in a new town in Sussex in the fifties, told me how he loved to take the train to Victoria and walk the streets, just drinking in the atmosphere. ‘There seemed to be so much going on. Not so many cars, of course, but lots and lots of people walking in the street, walking on the pavement, just looking. Lots of life going on, different nationalities working and enjoying themselves. You could hear different languages in the air, music, sounds of people working.’
When conducting interviews for this book, I always asked the people who grew up in the West End whether they were aware that they were living in a special place. Some saw it simply as home, but others felt privileged, such as Ann Lee, who grew up on Wild Street, just off Drury Lane. ‘The West End was somewhere that people knew about, and there was a feel about it, and the fact that we used to get tourists, American people coming up and asking us the way to Buckingham Palace. The Palace was a walk for us. Down to Trafalgar Square, feed the pigeons, down the Mall, St James’s Park, Buckingham Palace. You had the Waldorf Hotel in the Strand, and you’d be out for a walk and you’d see these ladies getting out of cars, fur coats and diamonds, and I’d say to my mum, “Oooh, look” and she’d say, “Yeah, in your dreams.”
‘If there was a première of something at Drury Lane theatre, or the opera house, the Queen used to drive up Wild Street, very slowly, and we’d all be out, either side of the road. The light would be on in the car and she’d wave to everyone. That was fascinating. You could go play on the grass and feed the ducks in St James’s Park, then Dad would maybe buy a juice between us from the cafeteria. One glass of juice and two straws, and then we’d walk home. Horse Guards Parade was smashing, seeing the soldiers on parade was lovely. That was an everyday occurrence for us. People would travel hundreds of miles to see it, and we just had to wander down the road.
‘There was a lot do. Although it wasn’t laid on for you, it was there. We even used to go in the art gallery in the winter. We’d go for a walk, go in the National Gallery, to look at the paintings. How many kids of ten or eleven have got an art gallery on their doorstep? I knew about Monet and Constable, because they were my sort of pictures. My brother would rather have been kicking a ball, but I learned about art. You could go to the gallery, you could go and walk round a church. We used to go down and walk along the Embankment. I mean, if you walked down into the Strand, down a side turning and down some steps, you’re on the Embankment, you can just walk along. There was a lot to see, and it was a bit special.
‘We used to think, cor, this ours, you know? You could jump on a bus, it took you to Chapel Street market. You could walk to Berwick Street market, or walk up Oxford Street, because it wasn’t that far. Everything was on your doorstep, really. It was lovely, really lovely.’
Mike O’Rouke, who grew up in the Seven Dials, enjoyed the simple pleasures the West End offered in post-war Britain. ‘When my grandfather was alive – he died in 1953 – he used to take me out and about a lot. He’d take me down to Trafalgar Square, we used to go down the Strand, he’d take me down the Embankment a lot. We used to like to walk over Hungerford Bridge to see the trains. There was the building going on for the Festival in 1951. I used to love to stand under Waterloo Bridge. The trams used to come out from the tunnel under Kingsway, and I would stand there and watch them change the points, for hours.
‘I got a second-hand bike when I was about eleven. I used to go around Kingsway and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, places like that. And that was great. That was the first time I found out where the Old Curiosity Shop was, around the back of Lincoln’s Inn. I always thought it was a made-up name but I went down this street one night and I saw it on the corner.’
It was only later, when Mike went to grammar school way out in the wilds of West London – there were few places in the West End for those who passed their eleven-plus – that he became aware how special other people thought his manor was. ‘We went down to Stukeley Street, just off Drury Lane, one night, to see an Arts Theatre production of, I think, Julius Caesar. It was to do with school. The boys were walking back to the station with the teacher, about twenty of us. We walked back past my house, and I said, “See you, I live here.” After that, as a teenager, all my school friends would go out on a Saturday night, for a drink or something, or the pictures, and all come round to my place, because it was the centre of London, you know. It used to drive my mum mad: “Oh, no, not them again.”’
Although outsiders saw the West End as a homogeneous whole, those who lived there tended to stick to their own side of the Great Divide – or the Charing Cross Road, as the A–Z prefers to call it. Mike O’Rouke ‘didn’t mix much in Soho until I was older. Me dad used to take me to Chris’s, the barbers in Old Compton Street, but growing up, I never really had any connection with the other side of Charing Cross Road. My manor was more the Dials and Covent Garden, you know.’
Jeff Sloneem, who lived in Old Compton Street, remembers the Great Divide from the other side. ‘We didn’t go to Covent Garden. I remember I very rarely crossed the Charing Cross Road. We went over Shaftesbury Avenue to Gerrard Street, because there was a post office there, but the only reason I’d have to cross Charing Cross Road was that I started collecting cigarette cards when I was a little kid, and there was a shop over there that sold them.’
When I quoted this to John Carnera, he said, ‘I know what he means. Going across Cambridge Circus was like a divide, because in those days Covent Garden market was very much active.’ The Sohoites tended, ironically, to see Covent Garden as ‘foreign’, while many in Covent Garden were alarmed by Soho’s reputation for sin – although, as we shall see in later chapters, those who actually lived in Soho were rarely, if ever, touched by it.
Ann Lee, who came from a long line of Covent Gardeners, suffered more than most from the suspicions of their neighbours across the Great Divide. ‘Us girls, as we were growing up, were told we mustn’t go to Soho. Good girls didn’t go to Soho. Of course we did go: my friend Alethea and me used to go to this coffee bar in Soho called Le Macabre. We couldn’t go very often, because we didn’t have a lot of money. If my mum had found out that I’d been to Soho, even though it was literally round the corner, I wouldn’t have been allowed out for months.
‘You couldn’t go to the cinema in Leicester Square. You had to go to the Dominion, Tottenham Court Road, or somewhere else. All us girls that grew up there were told, Oh no, that’s not a nice area for young girls to be on their own. We did go, obviously, because we wanted to have a look round. Our mums usually found out if we were somewhere that we weren’t supposed to be. Because it was such a close-knit community, someone always knew you, so you
couldn’t get up to too much, because somebody would tell your mother. That’s how it was. But we still did it, just hoped we didn’t get caught.’
I’ll leave the last word in this chapter with Peter Jenkins, whose father managed a large estate in Covent Garden. ‘Where we lived, within spitting distance, was the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. And you had the Aldwych Theatre, and all those on the Strand. It was a very richly cultural place to live, and there was so much history there as well. I had Trafalgar Square, the Changing of the Guard, Buckingham Palace, the Mall and Whitehall and everything else on my doorstep, and that became essentially part of my childhood.
‘My father was self-educated, and always pushed my interests in those ways. When I walked around the area with him on Sunday afternoons, he would point these things out to me, so I was always conscious I was at the centre of a very special place, and that I was part of the evolving history of a great city.’
*See Covent Garden Past by John Richardson.
2
During the War
Throughout the late forties and well into the fifties, the war and what came with it – rationing and austerity, bomb sites and bereavements, and a sense of drabness and dislocation – dominated people’s lives and conversation. Everybody’s life was marked out by the phrases ‘before the war’ and ‘during the war’, and the events of those years had a profound effect on what came later. And while some people in my parents’ and grandparents’ generation were adamant that they ‘didn’t want to talk about’ the war, others could not shut up about it.