Monmouth Street is a street in the Seven Dials district of

Covent Garden Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist sit ...

, London, England. Monmouth Street runs north to south from Shaftesbury Avenue to a crossroads with Tower Street and Shelton Street, where it becomes

St Martin's 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, London, Mo ...

. About halfway it meets Seven Dials, where it intersects with Mercer Street, Earlham Street, and Shorts Gardens. It is numbered B404.

Former street

The original street, which was named after the

Earls of Monmouth Earl of Monmouth was a title that was created twice in the Peerage of England. The title was first created for English courtier Robert Carey, 1st Earl of Monmouth, Robert Carey, 1st Baron Carey in 1626. He had already been created Baron Carey, of ...

who owned land here in the 17th century, ran from what is now

Charing Cross Road 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), which then merges into Tottenham Court Road. It leads from the north in the direc ...

to another former street called Broad Street (now part of St Giles High Street). Throughout the 18th century and for most of the 19th, Monmouth Street was famous for its old clothes shops. Gay wrote in his ''Trivia'': "Thames Street gives cheeses, Covent Garden fruits, Moorfields old books, and Monmouth Street old suits." Notable inhabitants in 1751–55 included the

freemason Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

s John Hamilton and John Holland. In the 19th century, Monmouth Street was widened to form the eastern part of Shaftesbury Avenue, and the name disappeared.

Current street

The current street was originally two separate streets. The part north of Seven Dials was called ''Great St Andrew's Street'' and the part south of Seven Dials ''Little St Andrew's Street''. In the 1930s the whole street was renamed Monmouth Street, in an attempt to re-create the original street. The Covent Garden Hotel is situated at no. 10 and the original home of Monmouth Coffee Company at no. 27. Pollock's Toy Museum started in 1956 in a single attic room at No. 44 above Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop, but outgrew the premises and moved in 1969 to Scala Street.

References

External links

Covent Garden Shopping streets in London Streets in the London Borough of Camden {{London-road-stub