Mercer Street

Mercer Street. . , Seven Dials is one of the many creations of Thomas Neale MP (1641-1699) - ‘The Great Projector’. Neale was one of the most influential figures of late Stuart England: an MP for 30 years serving on 62 parliamentary committees; Master of the Mint and the Transfer Office and Groom Porter under three kings; gambler, entrepreneur and husband to two of England's richest widows. William III granted him the freehold of the land, then known as Marshland or Cock and Pye Fields, in return for favours. Neale raised over £1m for the Crown via England's first lottery - 'the talk of the town' according to Pepys and based upon 'lotteries after the Venetian manner'., Plans for a building licence were submitted to the Surveyor-General Sir Christopher Wren in 1692. The star-shaped layout maximised income, as rents were charged by frontage. From the outset, Neale planned for Seven Dials to be a mix of residential, retail and crafts, very different from the fashionable, purely residential London squares of his day., - Today Seven Dials stands as the only quarter of London remaining from late Stuart England its layout is unaltered and many of the original houses remain, mostly re-faced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. To the south, the massive buildings of the Woodyard Brewery can be seen, unique in London's West End., The present name of Mercer Street alludes to the 'Elm Field' estate of the ancient City Livery Company, The Worshipful Company of Mercers. Their estate extends between Shelton Street and Long Acre and has belonged to the Company since 1530. The Mercers' maiden head crest can be seen in various forms on buildings throughout the estate., Mercer Street from The Dials to Shaftesbury Avenue , (formerly Great White Lion Street) , Sadly, this section of Mercer Street retains none of its original character. Photographs from 1906 show a row of well preserved Georgian shopfronts occupied by a chimneysweep, wardrobe dealer, Mr Rocco's Shaving Salon and a bicycle shop. The Mercer Street Hotel occupies a refurbished early twentieth-century block which covers the site of No 42, Great St Andrew's Street (now Monmouth Street), the fictional location of Mr Venus's shop in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend., From 1885-1975, the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Mercer Street was occupied by the headquarters of The Shaftesbury Homes and Arethusa. This organisation was founded in 1843 by William Williams who saw a dozen boys in rags, handcuffed together awaiting transportation to Australia. This sight led to him founding a Ragged School for destitute children. The patronage of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury secured the use of two redundant naval warships which housed up to 400 boys on the Thames and were the start of over a hundred years of training boys for life in the Royal or Merchant Navies., From The Dials to Shelton Street , (formerly Little White Lion Street) , The street's former name can be seen incised in the stone wall above the canopy of the Cambridge Theatre. The side elevation of the Cambridge Theatre fills one side of the street. Opposite its austere high brick and stone walls, Nos. 21, 25 and 27 is a group of well-restored late seventeenth- century, three-storied brick houses. The shop fronts were added in the early nineteenth century. No. 23 was built as a warehouse in 1894. Another local name for this stretch is Lollipop Hill, recalling a long-gone confectionary shop. Near what is now the stage door of the theatre was the family home of Charles Boon (1877-1943), who, with his partner Gerald Rusgrove Mills, set up the enduring romantic fiction publishing firm Mills and Boon. ,