The lost charm of London’s St Giles

London’s architectural landscape is changing at such a pace that it’s hard to remember what’s been lost beneath the acres of tarpaulin. Buildings I must have walked past a thousand times and that I could have sworn were important landmarks have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Despite the devastation there appears to be little in the way of pushback from harried, post-pandemic Londoners. How quickly we forget what our eyes once took for granted; the familiar razed without a second glance.

The area known as St Giles, just east of Charing Cross Road and south of New Oxford Street, has suffered more ignominy than most. Once a bohemian enclave and the ramshackle heart of London’s music scene, it was also where my parents shared a flat and later married, and where I have spent the past couple of years. It had always been Soho’s wayward, slightly seedy uncle – and with its dingy backstreets, underground dive bars and spooky alleyways, one could almost smell the soot of Victorian London.