This feature first appeared in May 2024 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.
“I was in Holborn Circus the other day — you know, the junction where the statue of Prince Albert tips his hat towards the City — and I thought, something feels a bit off about this place.”
So admitted my lunch companion, a fellow London explorer, last week.
I know what he means. The spot has never sat comfortably with me either. It has a buzz, thanks to the convergence of six roads, but it’s off by a semitone. Ancient roads abound: High Holborn, Fetter Lane, Hatton Garden, Ely Place… but their historical quality is absent from this junction. It feels like a non-place, a bit of London that is somehow artificial or grafted on. Why is that?
I think I know the culprits. It’s the Victorians. Almost every road in central London built during their custodianship makes me want to shuffle on somewhere else. It’s not that these places are ugly or unattractive… they just feel less liveable.
The vehicular hydra of Holborn Circus is a good taster. The Victorians took the ancient junction of Hatton Garden and Holborn, and replumbed Fetter Lane (as New Fetter Lane) to meet it. Then they smashed through the diagonal Charterhouse Street to hook up Smithfield. Meanwhile, the mighty Holborn Viaduct was constructed to the east. It followed a similar trajectory to the old Holborn Bridge, but with more attitude and altitude. The viaduct’s cast-iron brawn could span the Fleet valley without the slightest dip, removing a gradient that had dismayed horses since the time of Caesar.
All this was marvellous for cross-city traffic, but something was lost. A streetscape that had grown organically over hundreds of years, was obliterated in a heart beat. Most roads in London, and elsewhere, are built on virgin land, ever further out from the initial centre. But the Victorians, more than anyone before or since, were happy to pilot a steamroller through the centre of town.
Of course, we can readily find examples of people who’ve tried to do this in other eras. After the Great Fire, for example, numerous plans were put forward for the wholesale remodelling of the City. Similarly, all kinds of motorways and bypasses were planned in the wake of the Second World War, including schemes that would have trashed Covent Garden and Camden Town. Parts of this network got built (e.g. the Westway), but nothing has ever touched central London in quite the same extent as the 19th century road schemes mentioned in this article.
Let’s look a bit closer...
“The expedient way from A to B is that which smites the rookery.”
Popular 19th century town-planners’ saying, which I may have just made up.
It’s easy to spot a 19th century road because, well, the name often gives it away. Victoria Street in Westminster and Queen Victoria Street in the City are the two most obvious examples. Meanwhile, King William Street and Kingsway honour Victoria’s immediate predecessor and successor. These days, we name parks and tube lines after our monarchs; back then, it was all about the roads.
19th century streets also stand out on a map because they tend to barrel straight through neighbourhoods, with little regard for the historic street plan. Actually, that’s not quite right. Their designers paid great attention to the street plans, then worked out the best way to flatten the local slum housing. The Victorians seldom built a road that didn’t also turf out poor people.
Hence, New Oxford Street drove a convenient through-route from Holborn to Oxford Street in the 1840s, but it also broke up the notorious slums, or rookeries, of St Giles. Victoria Street, which opened in 1851, deleted some 3,000 tenements on the edge of the “Devil’s Acre”. Charterhouse Street erased some of the Saffron Hill and Chick Street slums where Charles Dickens had set Fagin’s lair in Oliver Twist. And so on, and so on.
These schemes did not, of course, eradicate the crushing poverty of the slums, they merely squeezed it like toothpaste into neighbouring areas. Many unlucky souls who’d fled the road-building in St Giles resettled a few streets to the south… only to be moved on again a generation later when Shaftesbury Avenue was cut through the area.
So why do these streets feel a bit “off”?
I think that plays a part, but it’s not the whole story. Bishopsgate, Holborn, Borough High Street, Fleet Street… these ancient places also attract heavy traffic, yet all have some intangible allure that elevates them above similarly proportioned Victorian routes.
Compare New Oxford Street to Oxford Street. They’re built on a similar scale and equally choked with motors. Yet the ‘New’ street feels somehow awkward or unappealing — an “area without character or purpose,” as Peter Ackroyd puts it. Ancient Oxford Street (an old Roman road), by contrast, is abuzz with human interaction, for all we like to sneer about it.
Regent’s Street is another case in point (though, admittedly, it slightly predates the Victorian era). Every now and then, the street has a ‘car free Sunday’ when it is entirely given over to pedestrians. It’s a chance to stand back and admire the imposing architecture (a mix of Regency, Victorian and Edwardian) without falling under a bus. Yet this will never be a warm, welcoming street. The older, parallel routes like Kingly Street and Savile Row are infinitely more rewarding. They feel like places to linger and poke around, to study every door-knob and window sign. They are more human. There are no pubs on Regent Street, which is telling.
Not all Victorian streets are equally off-putting. Charing Cross Road, for example, was developed around the same time as Shaftesbury Avenue (1870s). Both roads feel a little out of whack with neighbouring areas like Covent Garden, Soho and Seven Dials, but not to the same degree. Charing Cross Road does have a sense of character to it, perhaps because it’s been able to hold on to its smaller buildings — particularly the independent book shops. (And it has more pubs.)
Incidentally, these two Victorian roads meet at Cambridge Circus, which I find to be the most confusing location in central London. It is the one and only spot in the West End where I still feel disorientated after years of exploring.
Why do these committee-planned streets still feel a little alien to London, even 200 years after some of them were contrived? I think a large part of it is a kind of ‘uncanny valley’ effect. Proper old roads feel old. Proper new roads feel new. But the Victorian streets have elements of both. They were built to accommodate traffic levels similar in degree to our own age, and yet they also predate living memory. It’s this dissonance that gets us.
A rant about Kingsway
The best example of all is surely Kingsway. Is there a street in central London that’s more repellent to the pedestrian? On paper, it should work. The street is blessed with unusually wide pavements. It’s also one of the greenest thoroughfares in London. Don’t believe me? This is what Kingsway looks like from the balcony of the aptly named Bush House, at the street’s southern end.
Yet this is a wretched street to traverse. It doesn’t help that it’s angled almost north-south with tall buildings on either side. The sunshine can only penetrate the canyon for an hour or two either side of noon, and then its monopolised by the tree canopy. I’m a big fan of London plane trees (even made a video about them), but these ones turn Kingsway into Dimway.
Even without these light issues, Kingsway would still rank among my least favourite streets. Much of its run is taken up by hulking Edwardian buildings that are every bit as intimidating as they are handsome — it is the Christian Bale of thoroughfares. People moan about ‘identikit glass and steel offices’, but the traditional Portland stone alternative can also feel oppressive.
And have you ever tried to cross? The junction outside Holborn station would be an accident waiting to happen if it hadn’t already happened dozens of times. The southern crossing before Bush House takes forever. And the one halfway along has some serious issues with cars turning out of side-streets. But I digress.
Kingsway and the adjacent Aldwych sound proper old, especially the latter with its revived Anglo-Saxon name. The stone buildings look old, certainly when compared to modern glass-and-steel constructions. Yet the whole scheme is relatively recent.
It was designed in the late Victorian era (but completed just after) as a quick route between Strand and High Holborn. To repeat a now-familiar pattern, the road improvements also eradicated the mean streets around Clare Market, and the noted pornography hub of Wych Street. As you can see from this map, the plans were like a giant toilet plunger in both intent and appearance:
Until recently, I would have recommended you avoid anything blue in the map above. Every inch was unhappy space. But something wonderful happened over the Covid lull. The southernmost section running east-west along Strand was pedestrianised. Not only that, but the liberated tarmac is now strewn with arty planters and curlicues of seats. Somerset House and particularly St Mary le Strand can breathe again. Something of its pre-Aldwych character has returned. Taxi drivers will disagree, but I think this is the single greatest improvement to central London’s streetscape in recent years — at least for pedestrians and cyclists.
Above all it brings hope. Hope that other civic gulches might be reclaimed from traffic and renewed for pleasure. Hope that characterless interludes like New Oxford Street and Northumberland Avenue might one day find identity.
And if anyone can propose a way to humanise Holborn Circus then, like Prince Albert, I’ll take my hat off to you.
