Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus (the intersection with

Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and ...

) and then becomes

Tottenham Court Road Tottenham Court Road (occasionally abbreviated as TCR) is a major road in Central London, almost entirely within the London Borough of Camden. The road runs from Euston Road in the north to St Giles Circus in the south; Tottenham Court Road ...

. It leads from the north in the direction of Charing Cross at the south side of

Trafalgar Square Trafalgar Square ( ) is a public square in the City of Westminster, Central London, laid out in the early 19th century around the area formerly known as Charing Cross. At its centre is a high column bearing a statue of Admiral Nelson commem ...

. It connects via St Martin's Place and the motorised east side of the square.

History

Charing Cross road was originally two narrow streets in the West End, Crown Street and Castle Street. The development of Regent Street (parallel to the west) in the mid-18th century coincided with not only the building up of great fields west of the area but also Westminster Bridge which was built as central London and the wider estuary's second bridge after more than a century of pressure, in 1750. These pressures therefore congested the north–south axis of the inner West End almost as much as the relieved London Bridge area. Specifically a major increase in traffic occurred around Piccadilly Circus, Charing Cross and Oxford Street, much of it destined from/to

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...

and nearby routes to all northerly directions. Charing Cross Road was therefore developed, in conjunction with

Shaftesbury Avenue Shaftesbury Avenue is a major road in the West End of London, named after The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. It runs north-easterly from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus. From Piccadilly C ...

, by the

Metropolitan Board of Works The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the principal instrument of local government in a wide area of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent, defined by the Metropolis Management Act 1855, from December 1855 until the establishment of the London Coun ...

under an 1877

Act of Parliament Acts of Parliament, sometimes referred to as primary legislation Primary legislation and secondary legislation (the latter also called delegated legislation or subordinate legislation) are two forms of law, created respectively by the legislat ...

. The Act's total costs, including demolition and rebuilding of many rows of buildings across London was £778,238. The two streets and others such as the Thames Embankment, Northumberland Avenue and the Kingsway-

Aldwych Aldwych (pronounced ) is a street and the name of the area immediately surrounding it in central London, England, within the City of Westminster. The street starts east-northeast of Charing Cross, the conventional map centre-point of the ci ...

superstructure were built to improve traffic flow through central London. The scheme abolished some of the worst slums in London which delayed progress in construction while they were rehoused.

Bookshops

Charing Cross Road is renowned for its specialist and second-hand

bookshop Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of librar ...

s. The section from Leicester Square Underground station to Cambridge Circus is home to specialist bookshops, and more general second-hand and antiquarian shops such as

Quinto Bookshop Quinto may refer to: People * Quinto (name), list of people with the name Places * Quinto (Ponce), a barrio in Puerto Rico *Quinto, Aragon, a municipality in the province of Zaragoza, Spain * Quinto, Ticino, a municipality in Switzerland *In Ital ...

, Henry Pordes and Any Amount of Books. Zwemmer's Bookshop, an arts bookshop founded in 1922, was present at 79 Charing Cross Road until 2002.Jane Carlin
"Anton Zwemmer: London's Bookseller and Publisher for the Arts"
in: Book Club of Washington Journal, Fall 2012, Vol. 12, No. 2. Retrieved 17 February 2021. Smaller second-hand and specialist antiquarian bookshops can be found on the adjoining Cecil Court. Soho foyles bookshop 1

The northern section between Cambridge Circus and Oxford Street includes more generalist bookshops such as the venerable Foyles. A long-standing correspondence between

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

-based author Helene Hanff and the staff of a bookshop on the street, Marks & Co., was the inspiration for the book '' 84, Charing Cross Road'' (1970). The book was made into a 1987 film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins and also into a play and a BBC radio drama. the building is a restaurant at street level, entered around the corner in Cambridge Circus, but its upper levels of the building remain as originally constructed. A brass plaque on the stone pilaster facing Charing Cross Road commemorates the former bookshop and Hanff's book.

Features

The music venue the Astoria was located here, as is one of the sites of

St Martin's Arts College Saint Martin's School of Art was an art college in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1854, initially under the aegis of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Saint Martin's became part of ...

, opening in 1939. To the northeast of Charing Cross Road are the music shops on Denmark Street (known as Britain's

Tin Pan Alley Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street ...

). A number of theatres are on or near Charing Cross Road, such as the Phoenix Theatre (which has its entrance on the adjoining Phoenix Street), the Garrick Theatre and Wyndham's Theatre. Beneath the grille in the traffic island between Charing Cross Road's junction with

Old Compton Street Old Compton Street is a road that runs east–west through Soho in the West End of London. History The street was named after Henry Compton who raised funds for a local parish church, eventually dedicated as St Anne's Church in 1686. Th ...

, in the middle of the road, a road sign reading Little Compton Street can be seen, which was a historic name for the eastern end of Old Compton Street beyond its junction with Greek Street. On the east side of the road's southern end, at the joining of

St Martins Lane St Martin's Lane is a street in the City of Westminster, which runs from the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, after which it is named, near Trafalgar Square northwards to Long Acre. At its northern end, it becomes Monmouth Street. St Marti ...

, is a statue of Edith Cavell. Towards the north end is the Phoenix Garden, an environmental garden run by local residents.

In popular culture

In the ''

Harry Potter ''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students a ...

'' books, the Leaky Cauldron pub is located on Charing Cross Road. Author J.K. Rowling chose this road because "it is famous for its bookshops, both modern and antiquarian. This is why I wanted it to be the place where those in the know go to enter a different world."

References

;Citations * ;Sources

External links