Victoria is an area of
Central London in the
City of Westminster. It is named after
Victoria Station, which is a major transport hub. The station was named after the nearby Victoria Street.
The name is used to describe streets adjoining or nearly adjoining the station, including Victoria Street,
Buckingham Palace Road
Buckingham Palace Road is a street that runs through Victoria, London, from the south side of Buckingham Palace towards Chelsea, forming the A3214 road. It is dominated by Victoria Station.
History
In the 18th century, the road was known as ...
,
Wilton Road,
Grosvenor Gardens
Grosvenor Gardens is the name given to two triangular parks in Belgravia, London, faced on their western and eastern sides by streets of the same name. Both roads run roughly north to south from Hobart Place and Grosvenor Place to Buckingham ...
, and Vauxhall Bridge Road. Victoria consists predominantly of commercial property and private and social housing, with retail uses along the main streets.
The area contains one of the busiest transport interchanges in London and the United Kingdom, including the listed railway station and the underground station, as well as Terminus Place, which is a major hub for bus and taxi services.
Victoria Coach Station
Victoria Coach Station is the largest coach station in London, located in the central district of Victoria in the City of Westminster. It serves as a terminus for many medium- and long-distance coach services in the United Kingdom, and is al ...
, 900 yards (800 metres) southwest of the railway station, provides road-coach services to long-distance UK and continental destinations.
Victoria Street runs on an east–west axis from Victoria station to
Broad Sanctuary at
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...
.
Cardinal Place, across the street from
Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral is the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. It is the largest Catholic church in the UK and the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster.
The site on which the cathedral stands in the City o ...
, opened in 2006 and contains a selection of restaurants, banks and shops, including a
Marks and Spencer store. Further along the street, there is a large
House of Fraser department store (formerly the
Army & Navy) opposite
Westminster City Hall
Westminster City Hall is a municipal building in Victoria Street in Westminster, London. It is the headquarters of Westminster City Council.
History
In the late 19th century the parishes of St Margaret and St John held their meetings at the ...
. At the Broad Sanctuary end is the
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy building, the headquarters of
Transport for London at Windsor House, and the former
New Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London' ...
building (headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service from 1967 to 2016).
History
![Westminster Met](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Westminster_Met._B_Ward_Map_1916.svg)
The area formed part of the parish of
St George Hanover Square.
Long before Cardinal Place opposite the cathedral came into being there was a huge brewery (Stag Brewery) based at the western end of Victoria Street. From the early 17th century it started off as a small brewhouse with properties that once were part of St James's Palace. This then substantially grew and then was bought and owned by
Watney & Co. They built lodgings around the brewery as well as amenities for their staff to use. By the end of the 19th century they were employing a sizeable number of staff. (It closed down in 1959 and was demolished. All that now remains of it is a street named Stag Place and a pub called the Stag.)
Part of a slum, dubbed "
Devil's Acre" by
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
, was demolished to construct Victoria Street, which opened for use in 1851.
Pleasance Pendred
Pleasance Pendred (15 July 1864 – 29 September 1948) was a British campaigner for women's rights, an activist and suffragette who during her imprisonment in Holloway Prison went on hunger strike as a consequence of which she was force-fed. ...
and three other suffragettes smashed the windows of various shops including the antiquities shop at 167 Victoria Street in 1913.
Victoria Station was built in 1860.
Archibald Leitch who was renowned for his work designing football stadiums including
Goodison Park
Goodison Park is a association football, football stadium in the Walton, Liverpool, Walton area of Liverpool, England. It has been the home stadium of Premier League club Everton F.C. since its completion in 1892. Located in a residential area ...
,
Craven Cottage
Craven Cottage is a football ground in Fulham, West London, England, which has been the home of Fulham F.C. since 1896.According to the club'official website The ground's capacity is 22,384; the record attendance is 49,335, for a game against ...
,
Anfield
Anfield is a football stadium in Anfield, Liverpool, Merseyside, England, which has a seating capacity of 53,394, making it the seventh largest football stadium in England. It has been the home of Liverpool F.C. since their formation in 189 ...
,
Stamford Bridge,
Old Trafford,
Ibrox and
White Hart Lane
White Hart Lane was a football stadium in Tottenham, North London and the home of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club from 1899 to 2017. Its capacity varied over the years; when changed to all-seater it had a capacity of 36,284 before demolition. ...
among many others, had offices were based at 53 Victoria Street (they too are long gone), and the street as a whole housed many consulting engineering firms until the 1970s.
According to his biography
Norman Wisdom
Sir Norman Joseph Wisdom, (4 February 1915 – 4 October 2010) was an English actor, comedian, musician and singer best known for a series of comedy films produced between 1953 and 1966 featuring a hapless onscreen character often called Norman ...
slept near the statue of
Marshal Foch
Ferdinand Foch ( , ; 2 October 1851 – 20 March 1929) was a French general and military theorist who served as the Supreme Allied Commander during the First World War. An aggressive, even reckless commander at the First Marne, Flanders and Art ...
by the bus station at the westerly end of the street when his parents split up at the age of 9.
Before going into comedy he worked as an errand boy in the then grand Artillery Mansions on Victoria Street which was then a grand hotel. In the 1980s it went into decay and became a
squat - and in the 1990s was gutted, refurbished and now it is an elegant apartment block.
Landmarks
Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral is the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. It is the largest Catholic church in the UK and the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster.
The site on which the cathedral stands in the City o ...
is the largest
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
church in the UK and the seat of the
Archbishop of Westminster. It was built between 1895 and 1903 in the
Neo-Byzantine
Neo-Byzantine architecture (also referred to as Byzantine Revival) was a revival movement, most frequently seen in religious, institutional and public buildings. It incorporates elements of the Byzantine style associated with Eastern and Orth ...
style on a site previously occupied by the
Tothill Fields Bridewell
Tothill Fields Bridewell (also known as Tothill Fields Prison and Westminster Bridewell) was a prison located in the Westminster area of central London between 1618 and 1884. It was named "Bridewell" after the Bridewell Palace, which during the ...
prison from 1618-1884.
Victoria Palace Theatre
The Victoria Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in Victoria Street, in the City of Westminster, opposite Victoria Station. The structure is categorised as a Grade II* listed building.
History Origins
The theatre began life as a small conc ...
dates from 1911 and replaced the Royal Standard Music Hall, built in 1886. That itself had been a replacement for an earlier Royal Standard Music Hall, which originally opened in 1850 as Moy's Music Hall.
Little Ben, a -tall clock tower in the style of
Big Ben, stands at the intersection of Vauxhall Bridge Road and Victoria Street. It was erected in 1892 but removed in 1964 during road widening works, and was kept in storage until eventually being restored in 1981.
The
Apollo Victoria Theatre
The Apollo Victoria Theatre is a West End theatre on Wilton Road in the Westminster district of London, across from London Victoria Station. (The theatre also has an entrance on Vauxhall Bridge Road.) Opened in 1930 as a cinema and variety t ...
was built in 1929 in
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
style, opening in 1930 the New Victoria Cinema. It closed in 1975 before being reopened as a theatre in 1981. In 1984 it became host to the musical ''
Starlight Express
''Starlight Express'' is a 1984 British musical, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. It tells the story of a young but obsolete steam engine, Rusty, who races in a championship against modern engines in the hope o ...
'', which remained its main production until 2002.
Opposite the Victoria Street entrance to Victoria Station is the site of the former Metropole Kinema, built in 1929 and in operation until 1977. It reopened in 1978 as
The Venue, a live music club owned by
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), Tom Newman. It ...
, which ran until 1984. The building was demolished in 2013.
The
House of Fraser department store on Victoria Street, opened in 2005, is built on the site of the former flagship branch of the
Army & Navy Stores, opened in 1872. Army & Navy Stores had been acquired by House of Fraser in 1973.
Local schools
Three notable schools are closest to the Victoria neighbourhood,
Westminster City School
Westminster City School is a state-funded secondary academy for boys, with a mixed sixth form, in Westminster, London. The school educates over 800 students, with links to more than 100 different cultures, in a central London location. The sch ...
for Boys and
Grey Coat Hospital
The Grey Coat Hospital is a Church of England secondary school with academy status for girls in Westminster, London, England. It is a specialist Language College.
History
The school was formally established at the Trustees' first meeting hel ...
for Girls, as well as the independent
Westminster School
(God Gives the Increase)
, established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560
, type = Public school Independent day and boarding school
, religion = Church of England
, head_label = Hea ...
at Deans Yard near
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...
.
Future
Victoria is a designated 'Opportunity Area' in the Mayor's London Plan and
Westminster City Council's Adopted Core Strategy January 2011 policy planning document, recognising the potential of the area, with its excellent transport links to accommodate commercial and residential growth. There are a number of emerging proposals for major redevelopment in the area, including improvements to the Victoria Underground Station, and regeneration of surrounding sites.
See also
*
Pimlico
References
{{LB City of Westminster
Areas of London
Districts of the City of Westminster
Business improvement districts in London
Central business districts in the United Kingdom