Famous places down the street where I work Piccadilly
I used to work on a minor road in Ipswich, a bland strip of tarmac lined by furniture warehouses and shabby Victorian terraces. I now work on one of the most famous streets in the world, a grand thoroughfare of exclusive shops and historic Georgian terraces. It's quite an improvement I can tell you.
Piccadilly is one of London's oldest roads, leading from the West End to the west of town. The eastern half (pictured left) was originally called Portugal Street and the western half Hyde Park Road. The modern name of the road comes from a tailor named Robert Baker who had his business in nearby Haymarket. He made his fortune in the 17th century selling a fashionable frilled collar called a piccadil, and then spent his fortune on a big mansion on the outskirts of town nicknamed Pickadilly Hall. The street eventually took the name Piccadilly as a result, growing up posh and proper over the following centuries.
Piccadilly is nearly a mile long, with tall elegant buildings along most of its length and Green Park along the south side of the western half. The street is numbered from Piccadilly Circus down to Hyde Park Corner and back again, from 1 (Tower Records) to 149 (Apsley House) on the north side and back from 150 (The Ritz) to 230 (Virgin Megastore) on the south. Few streets in the world can boast landmarks and institutions as famous as those to be found along Piccadilly.
It's a very exclusive street, sandwiched between posh Mayfair and upmarket St James. It's a surprisingly wide street, more an avenue really, with room for at least four lanes of traffic. It's part of the A4, the trunk road that heads out of the capital towards Bristol. It's a street full of tourists, more crowded to the east, more upmarket to the west. It's a street full of Routemasters, with only one of the six bus routes so far 'upgraded' to one-person operation. And it's the street the Piccadilly Line is named after, the navy blue tube line running deep beneath the road surface.
I should point out to non-residents that not every street in London is like this. Pick a street at random from the London A-Z and you're much more likely find a few run-down houses and a kebab shop. But the street I work on is really mighty fine indeed. So, join me on my month-long stroll down Piccadilly, starting tomorrow beneath the staue of Eros. See, I told you it was famous.
Famous places down the street where I work
I used to work on a minor road in Ipswich, a bland strip of tarmac lined by furniture warehouses and shabby Victorian terraces. I now work on one of the most famous streets in the world, a grand thoroughfare of exclusive shops and historic Georgian terraces. It's quite an improvement I can tell you.
