Patrick Comerford
Before having a bad tumble on Oxford Street last week, when I ended up in the A&E unit in University College Hospital London on Euston Road, I had spent some time in the Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Street and Soho area, looking for old churches and buildings of architectural interest.
I have been in Gerrard Street and Chinatown before, and I first stayed in an hotel off Oxford Street back in 1970 or 1971. But I had never really got to know Soho.
Of course I knew of Soho as a centre for the theatre and music industries and its seedy reputation in the past as a centre for the sex industry, prostitution and night clubs that featured regularly in salacious reports in tabloid pressarchi from the 1950s on.
I knew of Soho too in lyrics from hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Kinks (‘I met her in a club down in old Soho / Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola’) and the Who (‘Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve played the silver ball / From Soho down to Brighton, I must’ve played ’em all’) to Shane Macgowan and the Pogues singing ‘Rainy Night in Soho’ in 1990:
I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms.
Soho is a much different area in recent years, to a degree. Many parts of it have been gentrified, with attractive cafés and restaurants, hotels and bars, theatres and music studios, although there is still a whisper everywhere of its recent salacious past.
Soho was a part of the ancient parish of Saint Martin in the Fields, forming part of the Liberty of Westminster.. But Soho never was an administrative unit with formally defined boundaries. It is about a square mile in area, and is usually considered to be bounded by Shaftesbury Avenue to the south, Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, and Charing Cross Road to the east. The area to the west is Mayfair, to the north Fitzrovia, to the east Saint Giles and Covent Garden, and to the south Saint James’s.
Soho Square in the centre of Soho has been a public square effectively since 1954 when it was transferred by the Soho Square Garden Committee to Westminster City Council. It was originally called King’s Square to honour Charles II.
But the name of Soho goes back long before King’s Square became Soho Square.
I have long been interested in the origins of the name Soho, wondering whether its etymological origin has any connection with the motto with slight variations on most Comerford coats-of-arms and that has long escaped a credible explanation or translation: ‘So Ho Ho Dea Ne.’
Most accounts say the name of Soho derives from an English 16th-century hunting cry ‘So-Hoe’ when the area was open fields and grazing land. There are also places called Soho near Handsworth in Birmingham, once a part of Staffordshire, and New York and Hong Kong, although the name of Soho in New York is an acronym for South of Houston Street.
The history of Soho as we know it today does not begin until after the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was originally a royal park used for fox and hare hunting. The fire destroyed two-thirds of London, creating in a huge demand for new housing. Soho quickly went from open fields to an fashionable residential location.
Immigrants began to settle in the area from around 1680 onwards, particularly French Huguenots after 1688, and the area became known as London’s French quarter. Greek Street was first laid out around 1680 and was named after a nearby Greek church. The early Irish residents included Arthur Annesley, 5th Earl of Anglesey, and Peter Plunket, 4th Earl of Fingall, and later Josiah Wedgwood ran his main pottery warehouse and showrooms there.
Building work in Golden Square, Gerrard Street and Old Compton Street began in the 1670s and Soho Square itself was laid out in 1681. When building began on Soho Square in 1681, one of the first residents was the Duke of Monmouth, one of the many illegitimate sons of Charles II. The square had become known as Soho Square by 1720, and when John Rocque drew his keynote map of London in 1746, the name of Soho Square had replaced King’s Square.
Monmouth House in Soho Square, built for the Duke of Monmouth, later became the French ambassador’s residence, but was demolished in 1773.
Soho Square was still close to the countryside in the late 18th century. Speakers of the House of Commons had houses in the square and a number of foreign embassies were there, including those of France, Russia, Spain and Sweden. But, between 1778 and 1836, the square was also home to the infamous White House brothel at the Manor House, 21 Soho Square.
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele wrote of their character Sir Roger de Coverley in The Spectator, saying, ‘When he is in Town he lives in Soho-Square.’
By the mid-18th century, the aristocrats who had been living in Soho Square or Gerrard Street had moved away to more fashionable areas such as Mayfair. By the 19th century, they had been replaced by prostitutes, brothels, music halls and small theatres.
In A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens has Lucie and her father, Doctor Manette living on Soho Square. It is believed that their house is modelled on the House of Saint Barnabas, and so the name of Rose Street was changed from Rose Street to Manette Street. Golden Square is mentioned by Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby, and Ralph Nickleby has a house on the square.
Robert Louis Stevenson had Dr Henry Jekyll set up a home for Edward Hyde in Soho in the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Soho was badly hit by an outbreak of cholera in 1854. John Snow’s study of the outbreak was significant in the history of epidemiology and public health. He mapped the addresses of the sick and noted that they were mostly people whose nearest access to water was the Broad Street pump.
Many small restaurants and cafés sprang up in Soho in the 19th century, particularly as a result of Greek and Italian immigration.
Soho Square has two churches, Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, partially on the site of Carlisle House, and the French Protestant Church, as well as the House of Saint Barnabas, which closed last year. Saint Anne’s Church on Wardour Street was built in 1677-1686. Nearby, the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and Saint Gregory on Warwick Street was built in 1788 and is the only remaining 18th-century Roman Catholic embassy chapel in London.
At the centre of Soho Square is a listed mock ‘market cross’ building, built in 1926 to hide the above-ground appearance of an electricity substation. It is a small, octagonal, rustic gardener’s shed with black-and-white, timber framing, a steep hipped roof and a squat upper storey with jettying, supported by timber columns. It incorporates 17th- or 18th-century beams and its style has been described as ‘Tudorbethan’.
The much-weathered statue of Charles II was carved in 1681 by the Danish sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the Poet Laureate Colley Cibber. It became the centrepiece of the square, set on a pedestal above a fountain and basin, with four figures representing four rivers, the Thames, Severn, Tyne and Humber.
In time, the fountain ceased to function, the basin was filled, and eventually the statue was removed In 1875 during alterations in the square by Thomas Blackwell, of Crosse & Blackwell, the food firm then based at 20-21 Soho Square.
Blackwell gave the statue to a friend, supposedly, for safekeeping, and it was absent for many decades, stashed away as a private garden feature in a country house. It was returned to Soho Square in 1938, although the garden was not restored and opened to the public until 1954.
The name Soho dates from at least 1632, but ‘So Ho!’ has been used as a hunting cry from perhaps the early 1300s. It was used in calling from a distant place to alert hounds and hunters when a hare had been sighted, similar to the use of ‘Tally Ho!’ in fox hunting – when a fox breaks cover and ‘soho!’ is the cry when the huntsmen uncouple the dogs.
Various dictionaries say ‘soho’ was a synonym for ‘tally-ho’, and the the word ‘soho’ as a call by huntsmen to direct the attention on the dogs or of other hunters to a hare that has been discovered, or to encourage them in the chase. Soho in London developed on an area that had been a royal park once associated with hunting and the area was developed from farmland by Henry VIII in 1536, when it became a royal park.
Interestingly, the Duke of Monmouth used ‘Soho!’ as a rallying cry for his troops at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the final battle in his rebellion. But the name Soho or So Hoe was in use for the area at least 50 years before the Duke of Monmouth led his troops with the battle cry.
Will Noble, editor of the website Londonist, wonders whether the link between the hunting cry ‘So Ho’ and the name of Soho is little more than an ‘unsubstantiated urban myth’. He dismisses as ridiculous another theory that Soho is an abbreviation of South of Holborn, pointing out that, in fact, Soho is to the west of Holborn.
Walter Thornbury discussed another cry theory in the Victoria County History in 1878. He suggested that ‘soho’ might come from ‘the footpad’s slang of the 16th century, when the fields were lonely at night, and divers persons were robbed in them.’ Footpads were the equivalent of highwaymen on foot, but there is nothing to substantiate Thornbury’s claim.
There are many other Sohos, SoHos and SOHOs around the world, from Malaga to Buenos Aires and Beijing, and all seem to take their name from Soho in London.
There is another Soho in Handsworth, which was once in Staffordshire but has been subsumed into Birmingham. The name of this Soho is said to come from an inn sign on Soho Hill that depicted a huntsman with the word ‘Soho!’ coming from his mouth. Other sources suggest Soho in Handsworth takes its name from a map reference to a building called South House, abbreviated as ‘So. Ho’. But it is also possible that the name was taken from Soho in London. Soho is now part of Handsworth and the name is used primarily with reference to the long and linear shopping centre along Soho Road.
As Will Noble writes, ‘the sketchiness of our Soho’s etymology is part of what makes this place so special.’
The motto ‘So Ho Ho Dea Ne’, with variations in spelling, has been used in the heraldry of the Comerford and Comberford families from at least the early 17th century. Any attempts to translate, explain or interpret the motto have always been inadequate, and it remains inexplicable. But the motto may relate to the presence of a talbot or hunting dog in the Comberford arms, which in turn may be associated with the arms of the Wolseley family, though the colouring is inverted. A similar hunting dog can be seen today in places in Soho, including the ‘Dog and Duck’ on the corner of Bateman Street and Frith Street.
The coincidence of the ‘So Ho …’ motto and the talbot in the Comberford and Comerford coats of arms may have been associated with the imaginative myth, repeated in Joseph Comerford’s fantastical pedigree in 1724, that ‘Roger de Comberford of Staffordsh[ire] came into Ireland with King John & was Great Master of the Game.’
The origins of the name of Soho in London seem less difficult to unravel than the origins of my family motto.
