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 A
little known relative of the more renowned Old Compton Street, New Compton
Street runs parallel with Shaftesbury Avenue to the South and runs between
St Giles High Street and Stacey Street to the North. It is said that
Old & New Compton Street were once joined as New Compton Street ran
all the way down across what is now Charing Cross Road and met Old Compton
Street. Charing Cross Road now bisects the two Comptons and connects
Trafalgar Square with St Giles Circus. It was constructed in 1887.
Both street
names originate from Henry Compton Bishop of London but it was simply
Compton Street until the 1820s. It was built up rapidly between 1677
and 1683 when the Bishop was fund-raising for the planned Soho parish
church which he dedicated St Anne's in 1686.
Its first
inhabitants included a royal physician, a theologian, four ladies of
title and a future vice-chamberlain to Queen Anne. For the next forty
to fifty years the inhabitants were just as respectable but not nearly
so well to do and about a third were French or of French origin. In
1711 the vestry of St Anne's Soho put the population of the parish at
8,133 and forty percent of these were thought to be French, mostly lodgers
rather than householders. This was partly due to the influx of Huguenots
to Soho when Charles II offered 'all such afflicted Protestants' his
royal protection in 1681 as they fled from the active discrimination
of Louis XIV.
In 1720 Strype
described the area as having an 'Abundance of French people, many
whereof are voluntary Exiles for their Religion....following honest
Trades; and some Gentry of the same Nation' but he seems to dismiss
Compton Street as being 'of no great Account for its inhabitants
which are chiefly French'. However many of the Soho Huguenots achieved
social eminence or wealth or both.
By
all accounts it has always been Soho's main shopping street. By the
end of the 18th century, less than ten of the houses were without shop
fronts. In the middle of the 19th century, while there were some workshops
too, as well as restaurants and public houses, the ground floors of
most of the houses were still used as shops. The number of foreign occupants
continued to grow and the street became a recognised meeting place for
exiles, particularly those from France: after the suppression in Paris
of the Paris Commune, the poets, Rimbaud and Verlaine often frequented
drinking haunts here.
The Prince
Edward Theatre in Old Compton Street began life in 1930 opening with
a musical comedy, Rio Rita. It was not a success at that stage and in
1936 was transformed in to a large cabaret restaurant that claimed to
be the most sumptuous in the world, the London Casino. During the second
World War the Casino was taken over by the Queensbury All Services Club
and in 1954 it became a cinema, pioneering wide-screen Cinerama and
finally came full circle reverting to theatrical status to stage Rice
and Lloyd Webber's Evita and Chess. The current production, Mama Mia,
is now having a very successful run.
New
Compton Street also has theatrical connections as it is the original
home to the Player's Theatre established in 1927, which began the London
career of Peggy Ashcroft.
The
area has provided a home to numerous composers and musicians and Old
Compton Street is no exception. Wagner, who was then an obscure conductor,
stayed for a week on Old Compton Street in August 1839 recovering from
a horrendous Baltic voyage. Apparently it was this that inspired The
Flying Dutchman.
 As
might be expected of one of London's more entertaining districts, Old
Compton Street had its resident curiousity in the form of Wombwell's
Menagerie. George Wombwell kept a boot and shoe shop on the street between
1804 and 1810 and by all accounts was quite an entrepreneur. Dwarf-like
and a drunk he nonetheless built up three hugely successful menageries
from a starting point of two snakes bought at a bargain price. The menageries
travelled the length and breadth of England and made him a wealthy man
before his death in 1850.
From
the 1920s Soho had begun to have a reputation as a night-club scene.
Many clubs sprang up and in the fifties another phenomena appeared,
the coffee bar. On Old Compton Street there was, Act One Scene One ('Real
French coffee where the film and theatrical celebrities gather'),
and Heaven and Hell ('Visit the unusual décor of the dive
basement'). The street is also home to a number of delicatessens,
international food shops and kitchen suppliers.
Today
Old Compton Street is still home to an array of night-life and a diverse
range of shops including coffee bars and delicatessans. It is now predominantly
known as the centre of the gay scene in London. New Compton Street by
contrast is little more than an alleyway of builders' hoarding that
gives us small indication of its history.
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