Holborn: Shaftesbury Avenue

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Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of Holboen with a look at Shaftesbury Avenue:

New Compton Street is within the former precincts of the hospital. When first made it was called Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph, and the later name was taken from that of Sir Frances Compton.

Strype says, "All this part was very meanly built...and greatly inhabited by French, and of the poorer sort," a character it retains to this day.

Shaftesbury Avenue, opened in 1885, has obliterated Monmouth Street, named after the Duke of Monmouth, whose house was in Soho Square.

Monmouth Street was notorious for its old-clothes shops, and is the subject of one of the "Sketches by Boz."

Further back still it was called Le Lane, and is under that name mentioned among the hospital possessions.

The north end of Shaftesbury Avenue is in the adjoining parish of St. George's, Bloomsbury, but must for sequence' sake be described here.

A French Protestant chapel, consecrated 1845, which is the lineal descendant of the French Church of the Savoy, stands on the west side.

Near at hand is a French girls' school.

Further north is a Baptist chapel, with two noticeable pointed towers and a central wheel window.

Bedford Chapel formerly stood on the north side of this.

In the lower half of the Avenue there are several buildings of interest.

The first of these, on the east side, is for the medical and surgical relief of all foreigners who speak French.

Below this is a chapel belonging to the Baptists, and further southward a working lads' home, established in 1843, for homeless lads at work in London.

In connection with it are various homes in the country, both for boys and girls, and two training ships, the Arethusa and Chichester.

Next: Holborn: Seven Dials