I own the streets of Soho. Rushing to a voice over job or killing time until the next one, I have walked its broadways and alleys for twenty years. I have marched and mooched around this square mile of London and its environs for such a large chunk of my life that I believe it to be mine. In the mooching hours I feel the ghosts of Soho’s departed who took possession of it in another age: Patrick Hamilton’s Wardour Street that once heaved with modestly dressed prostitutes, or Colin Wilson’s jazz infused, beatnik vision of ‘the French’. I stroll down Walker’s Court off Brewer Street and think of Soft Cell’s neon lit Soho of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. 

These days, when I make my usual cut throughs from Tottenham Court Road station taking the temperature of change – what’s new, what’s gone – I feel Soho belongs to me a little less. Every time I walk down Berwick Street I mourn the Endurance pub that had the best juke box; as I do Food for Thought over on Neal Street, the closure of which was frankly inexplicable, for it was never not busy. I was glad to have known Monmouth Street when it still had some semblance remaining of Dicken’s time with its second-hand clothes shops, “the burial-place of the fashions”. I was always drawn to its cobbled streets, to sit and sip coffee outside its eponymous coffee shop when I was feeling blue. It was also where I happened to first meet my husband, randomly, one warm mid-October afternoon. And it is where used to pulse the heart of London’s music making. 

‘Songs! Songs! Songs! Beautiful songs! Love songs! Newest songs! Old songs! Popular songs! Songs, Three Yards a Penny!’

In the early 1800’s the music business was dominated by ballad broadsides, and the king of all the broadside printers was The Catnach Press. Situated in Monmouth Court, it ran until 1840 in the capable hands of James Catnach who pioneered collections of ballads by the yard, on subjects he knew the public wanted: love, royal gossip, political scandals and the most popular of all, the murder ballad. Songs came from a team of local writers known as the ‘Seven Bards of Seven Dials’ who wrote up news of robberies, murders and imminent executions; or if they’d spent the day in one of Seven Dial’s many pubs and were not inclined to go after a story, they made one up. In Catnach’s print shop you’d find a fiddler on standby to try out the merits of the latest song and set it to a popular tune, and a singer ready and waiting to take the new ballad out into the streets. Catnach was rumoured to have retired to Barnet with £10,000 and the broadside format wafted over to America to become a template for its nascent pop songs.

Monmouth Court and the slums of Seven Dials were cleared in the mid 1880’s to make way for a “New Thoroughfare” from Leicester Square to New Oxford Street. But the area’s music association lingered. Publishing spread along Shaftesbury Avenue and into Denmark Street, powered by a litany of now forgotten names that kept this short street thrumming with piano music. On the north side of Denmark Street Francis, Day and Hunter used to be at no 23, publishing sheet music with titles such as, ‘A Man is Different to a Woman’ and ‘Alice, Where Art Thou Going’. But they moved with the times and by the 1930s they were taking orders for Gibson guitars. The Leicester born composer Laurence Wright moved in to no 19 and founded Melody Maker in 1926; next to Wright was Mills Music where Elton John started out as a tea boy and in-house songwriter. At no 21 were the headquarters for the Peter Maurice Music Company, where Marty Wilde and Adam Faith, like the old broadside singers, waited around to catch a song from the resident songwriter Lionel Bart. On the south side, the street’s first recording studio Regent Sounds opened at no 4 just after the war, where composers recorded acetate demos to promote new songs. In the spring of 1952, the much-respected friend of the Rat Pack, Maurice Kinn launched the New Musical Express at no 5, and in November, he launched the UK version of the weekly charts. 

London’s 100-yard equivalent of the Brill Building filled up with agents, labels, producers, and publicists. The Rolling Stones recorded their debut album at Regent Sounds, then followed The Kinks, The Equals, The Troggs, David Bowie, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Bee Gees, Tom Jones, Slade and Black Sabbath; as both a home and studio, no 6 was the chrysalis site of The Sex Pistols. Guitar shops, and the café, La Gioconda were hang out spots for members of pretty much every 20th century guitar band you know and love. Denmark Street held an irresistible energy that was captured forever in the music, and in true broadside style, Ray Davies wrote a song about it. 

Nowhere can remain unchanged. Indeed, the charisma of London has always been its mix of the old and the new. But I was heartbroken when Astoria, the last remaining great concert venue in central London was demolished to make way for the Elizabeth Line. I suppose you can’t fight compulsory purchase. Opposite where the Astoria once was is the Now Building, owned by one of Soho’s biggest landlords, Consolidated Group. Part of the Outernet ‘district’, it sits like a monolithic temple to disconnection from the natural world. It is the largest digital advertising platform in Europe offering ‘a unique, high impact canvas for brand storytelling’. Buried four floors beneath is a ‘custom designed blank canvas space crafted to host creative and cultural events from end to end of the live events spectrum.’ No, me neither.

Behind it is the Chateau Denmark. A luxury hotel that no doubt offers deliciously comfy beds and excellent service in a central location. But look closer and you’ll find it’s furnished with mock-ups of Britain’s defining music moments – an old leather night porter’s chair spray painted with ‘I Am Anarchy’ is a stand out – the licked-on insignia of a more interesting time. Two thirds of the north side of Denmark Street have been blanked out by the arse-end of the Outernet; Hanks, Rose-Morris, and Regent Sounds have been permitted to remain on favourable terms, but they live in the shadow of the digital overlord that now dominates St Giles. 

I’m not saying all redevelopment is bad, but it’s how it is done. The legend of Covent Garden’s survival is a testament to local and indeed, national determination to conserve. In 1971, London councils were ready to play fast and loose with its mostly empty derelict buildings. Centre Point had been completed five years earlier and signaled the way things were going. Thanks to the tenacity of the Covent Garden Community Association, some sympathetic MPs and a nationwide campaign, the GLC’s plans to flatten Covent Garden and build a concrete maze of shops, offices and a conference centre were abandoned five years later. More than two hundred buildings were listed to secure their future and, aside from rent hikes that put beloved restaurants out of business, sensitive redevelopment has happened under the guidance of local trusts made up of local people. 

But Crossrail was a beast too big. In the pursuit of economic growth, Consolidated Group have been going about their stealthy redevelopment, and what once induced a national outcry, now elicits a shrug of resignation. The Tin Pan Alley Traders Association, the Seven Dials Trust, the Soho Society, the Covent Garden Community Association, the Bloomsbury Association and the Charlotte Street Association all fought hard to be consulted on the so-called ‘collaborative redevelopment’ of Denmark Street, but the end result gives the impression of not so much a collaboration, rather the cannibalising of the area’s music heritage, then throwing it a bone. It could have been developed in a way that gave due reverence to the origin stories of what has been not only Britain’s most successful art form, but a global inspiration. 

I still miss the Astoria. Aside from the many great concerts I saw there, it was the place I met my all-time music hero; a night that went so like a dream, I afterwards skipped through a deserted Soho Square like Gene Kelly in Singin’ in The Rain. Which leads me to the point that developers disregard: you cannot replace the magic within the walls - the smell, the memories, the atmosphere. A perfect example is Wilton’s Music Hall, which has, thankfully, been preserved over centuries. Step inside and you experience the gift of time travel, for there is captured since 1859 the energy of humanity. 

In these days of technocracy and corporatisation, the past success of preserving a cherished part of the city’s cultural history is a reminder that we can hold onto what matters – craftsmanship on a human scale, beauty, but most of all, original spirit. The fight now might be even harder, but it is all the more vital. So when redevelopment danger comes again, and it will come, we must be vigilant and support the good people who fight to defend it. Because London doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to all of us.