Famous places just off the street where I work Shepherd Market
I'd never discovered Shepherd Market before I worked down Piccadilly, which is a shame because it's a little backstreet gem. It's an irregular maze of Georgian passageways, now home to a fine selection of antique shops, restaurants and wine bars. Wander round here any lunchtime and you'll find smiling businessmen and their lady friends sat at tiny tables on the pavement enjoying some expensive nosh. You'll probably also stumble across a number of prostitutes because this off-road enclave has long been one of London's top red-light districts. Back in the 1760s Kitty Fisher charged the aristocracy 100 guineas a night to sample her special services, whereas when Jeffrey Archer picked up Monica Coghlan here two centuries later it cost him two grand and his career.
Prior to Shepherd Market being laid out in the 1730s, this area was just an expanse of open fields on the western edge of town. Here was the site of London's notorious MayFair, a drunken saturnalia from which the surrounding district now takes its name. These riotous annual celebrations lasted a full fortnight from May Day, attracting wild revellers from all over London and the home counties.
Within a few decades the local area became the built-up affluent suburb of 'May Fair', ill-suited to such bawdy revelry as this. The Earl of Coventry successfully petitioned Parliament to get the fair closed down, claiming that it caused an annual disturbance behind his new residence at 106 Piccadilly. The May fair was forced to uproot itself, moving eastwards to Bow where the yearly vice and violence continued unabated until the 1820s on the banks of the river Lea. But that's a local story I told you in last year's local history month...
Famous places just off the street where I work
I'd never discovered Shepherd Market before I worked down Piccadilly, which is a shame because it's a little backstreet gem. It's an irregular maze of Georgian passageways, now home to a fine selection of antique shops, restaurants and wine bars. Wander round here any lunchtime and you'll find smiling businessmen and their lady friends sat at tiny tables on the pavement enjoying some expensive nosh. You'll probably also stumble across a number of prostitutes because this off-road enclave has long been one of London's top red-light districts. Back in the 1760s Kitty Fisher charged the aristocracy 100 guineas a night to sample her special services, whereas when Jeffrey Archer picked up Monica Coghlan here two centuries later it cost him two grand and his career.
"In the areas encompassing the market building were booths for jugglers, prize-fighters, both at cudgels and back-sword, boxing-matches, and wild beasts. The sports not under cover were mountebanks, fire-eaters, ass-racing, sausage-tables, dice-tables, up-and- downs, merry-go-rounds, bull-baiting, grinning for a hat, running for a shift, hasty-pudding eaters, eel-divers, and an infinite variety of other - similar pastimes."
