OXFORD STREET Colour group: green Purchase price: £300 Rent: £26 Length: 2km Borough:Westminster Postcode: W1
Oxford Street is one of the Roman Empire's most successful roads, at least in terms of retail income. It started out as a key connection west from Londinium, became the final mile for condemned prisoners on their way to the gallows at Tyburn and is now Europe's busiest shopping street. Over the centuries it's been known as Via Trinobantina, Tyburn Road, Uxbridge Road and even Worcester Road, but by the 1720s had settled into being plain Oxford Street. It's also another of those famous streets I could easily blog about for entire week but I won't, I'll just bring you eight condensed bloglets on a variety of themes. Also can I say up front that if it doesn't look like Europe's busiest shopping street in my photos, that's because I turned up early on Sunday morning when almost all its doors were shut.
i) A quick walk along Oxford Street
With your back to Marble Arch head east. This is the less prestigious trafficked end. Hufflepuff scarves and boxfresh trainers are up for grabs. Yes the Christmas lights are up already. The trees outside Selfridges haven't yet shed their leaves. A few buses, a few taxis. Little kiosks selling shawarma, souvlaki and wheelie suitcases. HMV is back. Squat concrete benches provide somewhere to sit. The next Monopoly Street bears off on the right. Jetsetting tourists are wearing prestige brands in beige and grey. Temporary traffic lights are present even here. A new Jack & Jones/JJXX store opens in a fortnight's time. That's a lovely old mosaic of some scissors. Regent Street cuts a canyon across the Circus. Two scuzzy telephone kiosks have no handsets. A streetsweeper gathers little litter. Scaffolding hides a double-height flagship retail opportunity. It all ends on Tottenham Court Road with a lot of variegated brickwork. Clothes and footwear are readily purchased throughout.
ii) Peak Oxford Street
The largest store of all is Selfridges, indeed across the whole of the UK only Harrods is bigger (and that's not on the Monopoly board anyway). It was opened in 1909 after its owner stealthily bought up an entire city block in an attempt to bring American selling methods to the Brits. The church where my great grandparents had married less than 10 years previously was one of the casualties. Harry's aim was that every visit to the store should be 'an event', a sumptuous maze of departments which retains an air of luxurious pizazz to this day. It may look classical but is in fact one of London's first large steel-framed buildings. The clock above the main entrance was added to celebrate the store's 21st birthday and is supported by the Queen of Time standing on the prow of the Ship of Commerce attended by nymphs. Expect a big reveal for the Christmas window displays soon once the frankly drab Canada Goose adverts are taken down.
iii) the other retail behemoths of Oxford Street
Think department stores and you might also conjure up John Lewis, Debenhams and House of Fraser. But post-pandemic only the first of these survives, with Barbara Hepworth's marvellous winged figure on a side wall. Debenhams closed in February 2021 and is currently ensheathed in scaffolding as it evolves into a mostly-office block called The M Building. House of Fraser closed in January 2022 and is similarly undergoing a £132m refurbishment to convert the upper floors to workspace and restaurants and the basement to a gym and swimming pool, all of which will go under the ridiculous brand name Elephant. Top Shop's rebirth as an unlikely IKEA is closer to completion and due to open in the first half of next year. The other largest stores are probably the two Primarks that bookend the street and the two Marks & Spencers, one of which remains listed and one of which controversially now has permission to tear down and rebuild.
iv) old and new on Oxford Street
For an ancient street there's very little in the way of old buildings along its length. The oldest I've manged to find is the former hat factory at 105-109 Oxford Street, currently home to Harmony and Flying Tiger, whose beige terracotta shell was erected in 1887. One of the few other pre-Edwardian properties is at 147, now occupied by Swarovski beneath a Flemish Renaissance redbrick facade. At the newer end of the scale a large number of smaller properties have been merged into large commercial bubbles such as Park House, a glass cocoon near Marble Arch whose ground floor tenants are mostly fashion staples. Zara is also the main tenant at number 61 whose top three storeys are fronted by an extraordinary wave of rippling glass, this shielding a row of luxury duplex apartments. Here as at the garish gold apartments above the Crossrail station, residential property is finally returning to Oxford Street.
v) transport along Oxford Street
Long queues of buses used to be synonymous with Oxford Street, indeed 50 years ago fourteen different routes plied the central section between Orchard Street and Oxford Circus. Today it's only four, with every prospect that even these will be removed when the Mayor takes control and enforces pedestrianisation. Bus shelters have increasingly become superfluous but haven't necessarily been removed, such as the one outside Selfridges whose roadspace has now been given over to taxis, the other prime means of transport hereabouts. The street is long enough to support as many as four tube stations, and has been since 1900, but if you tried using the two deeper-level Crossrail stations to get from one end to the other you'd probably be wasting your time.
vi) nostalgia on Oxford Street
I remember coming to see the Christmas lights when I was little, they were always an event. I remember Stanley Green the Protein man and the Golf Sale placard. I remember being unimpressed by a Wendy burger soon after they first opened in 1980. I remember spending hours browsing through the newly-released cassettes and CDs in Virgin Records before it became Zavvi before it became Primark. I remember catching the nightbus home from the first stop to make sure I would get a seat. I remember traipsing up and down failing to buy my Mum a Christmas present she would never open. I remember walking through the Plaza shopping mall to buy a Radio Times in WH Smiths. I remember standing amid a river of Palestinian flags in that big protest last year. I remember the fire engine blazing its lights outside Bond Street station on Sunday. I'm sure you all have your memories of Oxford Street too.
vii) the candy stores of Oxford Street
A couple of years ago I counted the number of candy stores along Oxford Street and there were eleven. This week I've counted again and there are only two. It's an amazingly successful extinguishment given that councillors were increasingly suspicious they might be fronts for nefarious businesses. What's more both the current stores are new additions, the larger being CandyLogo which fills the unit alongside what used to be Candylicious and sells all the usual teeth-rotting treats. Gummylicious at number 399B is much smaller and barely worth a rummage, indeed its candy selection barely fills a single set of shelves. Amazingly there are now more Boots the chemists than American candy stores so we can perhaps lay that trope to rest. Gift and souvenir shops remain in multitudes, I counted 15, and also 21 empty shops that thankfully won't be colonised by Jelly Belly beans and strangely-flavoured cereals.
viii) non-retail on Oxford Street
It's not all shops. A single pub survives at the very eastern end, The Flying Horse, whereas once you'd have found 20. The 100 Club is a classic live music venue, originally a restaurant, where Glenn Miller, the Sex Pistols and Sleaford Mods have played. Various schools for teaching English have premises in part-converted offices, purely because the address helps increase sign-ups overseas. The London College of Fashion skedaddled last year to the Olympic Park. There are still two banks - a Lloyds and an HSBC. The Salvation Army own a 500-seater called the Regent Hall which dates back to the 1880s. The Cumberland, formerly the Hard Rock, has over 800 rooms because every Monopoly property needs a hotel. The TwistMuseum occupies part of what used to be British Home Stores and is essentially a sequence of optical illusions and kaleidoscopic photo opportunities for those with £23 to burn. But Oxford Street is mostly shops, pretty much in its entirety.
