Street features
Every Covent Garden Street has its own history, some more desirable than others.
Please select street below and meet some of Covent Garden’s characters over the years.
- Please choose a street from the below -
West Street
Despite its almost hidden location behind Upper St Martin’s Lane, West Street has certainly made its mark in the history books over the years having been home to distinguished religious figures as well as being classed as one of the most famous streets in the world of ballet.
References to West Street date back to the 1680s when it was laid out by Nicholas Barbon on the Earl of Newport’s Estate. In its earliest days it was known as Hog Lane, an ancient medieval thoroughfare later incorporated into the Charing Cross Road. Some of the most intriguing details of its history lie behind the walls of No. 24 and No. 26, which are today owned by the St Giles-in-the-Fields Parish Church. Rev. Gordon Taylor, who was Rector of St Giles for fifty years from 1949-99, now retired, explains "In the world of ballet, West Street must surely be the best known street in London. Since the mid-twenties, two generations of ballet dancers have been trained at No. 26, the chapel-house and occasionally at No.24, the chapel. The chapel dates even further back to 1700 when it was built for Protestant Huguenot refugees from France who settled in the Soho area. Designed by EA Eden it was then known as ‘La Pyramide de la Tremblade’."
Change came on 29 May 1743 when John Wesley took over the lease and, for a rent of £18 per annum, it became the first Methodist chapel in London and later the main headquarters of Methodist work in the West End. For a while, Wesley’s sister also lived at the chapel-house. In 1798, the Methodists moved to Great Queen Street and the chapel became a ‘free chapel’ under the Bishop of London and for a time a school.
Rev. Taylor continues "In 1888, the chapel was purchased for £5,000 by St Giles-in-the-Fields through public subscription as a chapel-of-ease to the parish church. C of E services were held here until a bomb blew a large hole in the roof during the 2nd World War. Soon after I became Rector in 1949, I went to see the chapel for the first time. To my surprise I found a whole chorus-line of beautiful girls of the John Tiller School of Dancing (the ‘Tiller Girls’ who rivalled the New York ‘Rockettes’) practising with great precision despite the rain which was coming in through the bomb hole in the roof (the office of the Tiller School was under the gallery at the Ambassador’s Theatre end). Years later, we began to restore the chapel and in order to recoup the money spent, we began to let the building from June 1955 onwards.
The ballet history at West Street chiefly concerns the new chapel-house where, for many years, the large club-rooms were let by the hour for ballet instruction. The earliest name in ballet connected with West Street appears to be that of Margaret Craske in the 1920s. Miss Craske told me in a spirited letter how Anna Pavlova once paid a surprise visit to No 26; she came into the studio ‘beautiful with charm’ and for a while the class was stunned feeling unable to move because of their astonishment. Anna Severskaya succeeded as tenant when Craske went to live in India. After 1941, when the chapel ceased its services through bombing, some rehearsals had to take place here too because of the extra space, particularly when the Sadler’s Wells Ballet first came to Covent Garden to perform."
Behind the doors of the West Street chapel today, you will find a whole host of companies including Visualeyes Imaging Services, which has been based here since 1987. A photographic imaging laboratory to the music and entertainment industry, they have transformed the derelict ballet school into a high-tech laboratory and office space. Although the outside of the grade 2 listed building remains unchanged, from the newly refurbished interior Visualeyes offer a full range of photographic services.
It is not only ballet that has put West Street on the map but also the long established Ivy Restaurant, once a favourite haunt of Nöel Coward and the Ambassador’s Theatre where both Ivor Novello and Vivien Leigh made their West End debuts.
