Soho London

Soho has a long and colourful history. The first record of the name comes from the 17th century when the area was pasture after being used as hunting park for the Royal Court of Henry VIII some 100 years earlier.

Despite this royal attention and very grand development taking place in adjoining districts, Soho did not become fashionable until recent times and was mostly known as an area settled by new immigrants. By the mid-19th century it had become the home of prostitutes and low brow music halls. Things looked up in the early 1900s when it gained something of a Bohemian reputation with writers, artists and actors moving in but the sex industry continued to dominate the district until as recently as the 1980s. This lucrative business was always run by organised crime groups and ensured that Soho was a notorious haunt of gangsters throughout much of the 20th century.

The music business began to really prosper here in the 1950s with a beatnik and jazz culture very much to the fore. Perhaps London's most famous jazz venue, Ronnie Scotts, is still thriving today in Frith Street. Many famous rock bands are also closely associated with Soho. The Rolling Stones played their first ever live concert here (at the legendary Marquee) and The Sex Pistols lived in Denmark Street as well as playing a number of infamous gigs. In the 1970s and 1980s Soho, and the Marquee in particular, was the place in London to head for to check out up and coming and often very controversial British bands.

Since the 1980s, the whole of Soho has undergone rapid transformation and development into a fashionable district of upmarket restaurants and media offices. There are though still a few places which are easily associated with its more colourful past and even a small remnant of the previously dominant sex industry remains.

Modern day Soho has the densest concentration of restaurants, cafés, clubs and bars , clustered around Dean Street, in central London and truly represents the vibrant, bustling heart of the city. It is also the modern hub of London's media world with multiple advertising agencies, television and radio studios and post-production companies choosing this as their base of operations.