Wardour Street

Wardour Street /ˈwɔːdɔː/ is a street in Soho, London. It is a one-way street that runs north from Leicester Square, through Chinatown, across Shaftesbury Avenue to Oxford Street.

There has been a thoroughfare on the site of Wardour Street on maps and plans since they were first printed, the earliest being Elizabethan. In 1585, to settle a legal dispute, a plan of what is now the West End was prepared. The dispute was about a field roughly where Broadwick Street is today. The plan was very accurate and clearly gives the name Colmanhedge Lane to this major route across the fields from what is described as "The Waye from Vxbridge to London" (Oxford Street) to what is now Cockspur Street. The old plan shows that this lane follows the modern road almost exactly, including bends at Brewer Street and Old Compton Street.

The road is also a major thoroughfare on Faithorne and Newcourt's map surveyed between 1643 and 1647. Although they do not give a name, it has about 24 houses and a large "Gaming House" roughly on the site of the Odeon cinema on the north west corner of Leicester Square. The map also shows a large windmill, 40–50 yards to the west of what is now the Church of St Anne, roughly on the current position of Great Windmill Street.

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