After his death, however, aristocrats took ownership of the
park and traded off various parts of it. The area's status took
a nose dive and soon it ran into disrepair, with music halls,
theatres and brothels appearing at a rampant pace. In 1719,
the first Hellfire Club was set up here the Duke of Wharton
so the country's elite could get up to very bad things behind
closed doors, and a reputation for sleaze lingered. Walk along
Soho's south-east side – its least gentrified section – and you
can still see traces of that rampant sex industry, to this day
pumping millions into the area each year, mostly in the form
of discreet sex shops around Brewer Street.
One of the real joys of the app is that it features recorded
anecdotes from local characters. So, for instance, you can
hear, first hand, about the gritty period in the mid-20th
century, when East End hoodlums would fight turf wars
against their south London counterparts. “If a club needed
smashing up, or if a club manager needed to be kidnapped
that was my job,” boasts Fifties gangster Frankie Fraser, “and
I was very good at it.”
Of course, it wasn't all thuggery – as a jaunt along Carnaby
Street reveals. By the beginning of the 1960s, as French
immigrant tailors toiled away, it had become a style hub.
During that decade, this road became the meeting place
for mods, rockers, teddy boys and hippies, drawn to the
psychedelic outfits on display in the shop windows.
03:
Guitarist
Jimi Hendrix and
bassist Noel
Redding playing
in legendary
venue The
Marquee, 1967
04
05
“
There were people dancing in the street and every shop
played very loud music,” recalls legendary designer Molly
Parkin, another voice on the app, who became fashion editor
of
The Sunday Times
.
With such an in-pouring of people came an outpouring of
some of the finest music the UK has ever produced. Walking
past Ronnie Scott's (
ronniescotts.co.uk
)
on Frith Street, it
may come as a surprise to discover this was Britain's first
jazz club, hosting performers from Louis Armstrong and Ella
Fitzgerald, or that The Marquee Club on Oxford Street was
where The Rolling Stones performed their first gig. Nearby,
then-Stones guitarist Brian Jones actually shared a flat with
guitar icon Eric Clapton, while Jimi Hendrix and Elton John
cut their albums at the studios on Denmark Street.
By the 80s though, the atmosphere in Soho had made a
sharp handbrake turn. AlthoughThe 100 Club (
the100club.
co.uk
)
pioneered punk, turning local boys, the Sex Pistols
into stars, its then-club-promoter RonWatts says punk also
brought out the worst aspects of Soho. “I put on the first Sex
Pistols concert, and I saw Sid Vicious threaten a girl from the
04:
Arguably the
heart of Soho in
the 1960s, by the
1980
s Carnaby
Street had
become tawdry
and rough
05:
The 100 Club
became famous
during the 1970s
for helping to
bring punk music
to the masses
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