Greek Street Soho is the one London street name every Greek notices on the first walk through the West End, and almost nobody knows why it is there. This weekend is a good excuse to find out. The street runs from Soho Square down to Shaftesbury Avenue, the Christmas lights are already on around the corner, a new rooftop fire garden opens a few doors away on Thursday, and three Greek List members are within a short walk when you get hungry.
The answer is a church. In 1677 a group of Greek refugees, led by Joseph Georgirenes, a native of Milos who had been Archbishop of Samos, built the first Greek Orthodox church in London on the west side of what was then Hog Lane, just east of today’s Greek Street. The ground was marked out by Henry Compton, the Bishop of London, and Georgirenes spent about £800 of money he had raised himself on the building. An inscribed tablet on the front recorded the foundation in the year of Salvation 1677.
The street that grew up beside it took the name of the congregation, and Greek Street Soho has kept it for almost 350 years, long after the Greeks themselves had gone. The whole story is in the Survey of London, which is where the dates below come from.
The Greeks did not keep their church for long. By 1681 most of the community lived elsewhere in London and found Soho too remote, so they asked to move. The bishop refused to let the building be sold, the parish valued it at £168, and when Georgirenes would not hand it over the parish simply took possession.
From 1682 the building was leased to French Protestants, who called it L’Église des Grecs and stayed until 1822. In 1850 it was consecrated as the Anglican church of St Mary the Virgin, Crown Street, rebuilt around 1900, closed in 1932 and demolished by the end of 1934. The site became St Martin’s School of Art, and today it is the Foyles bookshop at 107 Charing Cross Road. The Greek tablet of 1677 survived: it was re-erected in the Cathedral of Aghia Sophia on Moscow Road in Bayswater, where you can still see it. The church also appears in Hogarth’s painting Noon, with the French congregation spilling out of its door.
Getting there: Tottenham Court Road station (Elizabeth, Central and Northern lines) is three minutes from Soho Square. Foyles is on Charing Cross Road, between the station and Cambridge Circus.
Start at the top, at Soho Square. No 1 Greek Street is the House of St Barnabas, a Georgian house of 1746 that Dickens used as the model for Dr Manette’s lodgings in A Tale of Two Cities. Walking south, No 7 has had a pub, the Pillars of Hercules, since 1733, and No 9 was the Turk’s Head tavern where a rival Grand Lodge of Freemasons was organised in 1751.
Maison Bertaux at No 28 is said to be the oldest patisserie in London, open since 1871 and still making everything on the premises, with the same blue and white awning you will recognise from a hundred photos. Across the junction with Romilly Street is the Coach and Horses, a pub site since the 1720s and home of the Private Eye lunch. L’Escargot at No 48 is the grand old French restaurant of Soho, Casanova rented a room at No 47 in 1764, and Thomas De Quincey lodged at No 58 in 1802.
Getting there: Greek Street Soho runs between Soho Square (north) and Shaftesbury Avenue (south). Leicester Square station is five minutes from the southern end.
Soho is at its best from mid November. Secret London leads its weekend list with the Fire Garden at the Ham Yard Hotel, a heated rooftop terrace with fire pits that opens on Thursday 12 November and runs to 23 December, Thursday to Saturday in November and Tuesday to Saturday in December. Tickets are £19, or £15 without alcohol, and include a Smoky Gimlet on arrival and s’mores to toast yourself. Ham Yard is off Great Windmill Street, about six minutes from the bottom of Greek Street.
Five minutes the other way, the Carnaby Street Christmas lights are already switched on, and Skate Leicester Square runs until 1 January with a small Christmas market around the rink serving mulled wine and hot chocolate. Put the three together with the walk above and you have a full Saturday afternoon in one square kilometre.
Getting there: Ham Yard Hotel, One Ham Yard, W1D 7DT, two minutes from Piccadilly Circus station. Carnaby Street is between Regent Street and Soho. Book the Fire Garden in advance, tables are limited.
Greek stop nearby: Elysée on Percy Street, Fitzrovia, is a ten minute walk north of Soho Square across Oxford Street, open since 1936 and famous for its live music nights, so it is the natural end to a Soho evening. The Life Goddess on Store Street, Bloomsbury, is twelve minutes away for a Greek lunch, coffee or a bag of Greek groceries to take home. Nostimo at the Brunswick Centre, Russell Square, is three stops on the Piccadilly line from Leicester Square and a good shout for a proper Greek dinner after the rink.
If you are out on Saturday 14 November, the Lord Mayor’s Show starts at Mansion House at 11am, passes St Paul’s around 11.15 and reaches the Royal Courts of Justice at about 11.30, before the return along the Embankment from 1.10pm. It is free, it has run for more than 800 years, and the City of London Guides offer free walks from No 1 Poultry at 3pm. Twenty minutes on the Central line and you are back in Soho for the afternoon.
At Trafalgar Square, the free exhibition for 300 years of St Martin in the Fields closes on Sunday 15 November. And if the Greek church story stays with you, take the Central line to Queensway and see the 1677 tablet for yourself inside Aghia Sophia on Moscow Road, the cathedral that the Soho Greeks never lived to see. Finally, Soho gets a Greek evening of its own on Saturday 28 November, when two Greek psychologists give a talk and workshop in Greek at 21Soho on Sutton Row, one minute from Greek Street Soho.
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