Click on FAQs for further detail on how to Shuffle Soho

We begin at 75 Dean st

It’s 2026  right now- and at time of writing the Museum of Soho resides here.
Along with arts organisation- All is Joy
but culture gets moved on fast in Soho.

Find Museum of Soho here

75 Dean St was the site of the De Lane Lea building, a part of Soho’s rich history of cinematic post-production, stretching back to the early 20th century

While you’re following the Soho Shuffle, we ask that you try  to anchor yourself in Soho as a historic place.

A place of rebelliousness, of entertainment, of eccentricity and of living on the margins throughout its history

Obviously you can also get lunch here, which’ll be nice. And there is a lot of that about these days:  Soho has certainly seen a huge amount of gentrification in recent years.

But spare some brainspace for the others who came before you, others who also got lunch here- or, perhaps more importantly, others who couldn't afford to get lunch.

Soho's foundation is one of rebellion.
Queen Elizabeth 1st said - in short-
no more London. It's getting far too big. No more room! And certainly don't go building on Daddy’s old hunting fields whatever you do Nope, shoo etc, and drat you've just gone and built it already!

Soho sprung up

As you follow this route allow yourself to be immersed, look up, find what remains from times previous. Line up your view with those of the images presented to you here, dance to the tunes you hear and think about the manner they were originally danced to.

Don't worry about the people around you or what they think.

Or, do worry about them .

worry that they're not currently dancing in the street or looking up.

Soho has been a seat of new phases, cutting edge sounds and latest crazes for 400 years. From the Molly Houses of the 19th Century, the dancing boom of the World War II years, the highs and lows of the Cafe de Paris, from the Goths in the Batcave to Jazz greats in Frith Street.

There are too many stories to tell in just over an hour so we’ve picked just a few in a tight footprint.
But we do encourage you to call in for a drink (or a nose around) along the route at some of the locations that are still entertaining- some of which have stayed in place for decades or centuries.

We will begin by shuffling off in the direction of Soho Square.  Take a right onto Carlisle street

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I the Soho Fields lay on the far side of London's western edge. After the dissolution of the monasteries, King Henry VIII had purloined them for the Crown, as a royal hunting ground.

“Sohoe ye Hare is found’ was the hunting cry.

Elizabeth 1 forbade the building of more houses in a bid to stop the London population growing.  But by 1606 so many illegal dwellings had been built - hovels and grand houses alike - that the parish of St Martins complained to king James 1
“ our church is not of sufficient bigness to receive parishioners, and the churchyard is so little as there is no room for us to bury our dead “

Even then, when most of Soho was still fields, a drinking den and gambling house called Shaver's Hall sprang up, starting Soho's long reputation for entertainment, revelry, and vice.

In the 1660s soho became the centre of a building boom as London spread westwards after the great plague of 1665 and the great fire of 1666
The  architect Christopher Wren managed  to impose his rational grid plan on Soho’s development.  Something he’d hoped and failed to achieve across London  after the great fire. 
And in  just 7 years what we now understand to be soho was built- bounded by Oxford Street (formerly Oxford Road)  Charing Cross Road (formerly Hog Lane), and the line of today's Regent Street (formerly Shrugg Lane) — was built, entirely at the builders' own expense, by an army of workers and artisans organised by two lead developers, Richard Frith and Nicolas Barbon (an MP)

Soho has always been a place where people have lived, and  worked and it’s always offered a home to new arrivals: folks who, more often than not, were fleeing persecution: be they Greeks,  French Huguenots,  Irish, Italian or Jewish

In fact the largest twentieth-century groups of emigres have been Chinese.

Each group has brought their own  language, culture, trades, and cuisine

Thus Soho has always been a microcosm of society in transition- a little version of the shifts in our world. A  microcosm, of our own selves.

Images, from top: Gaz’s Rockin Blues, Ruby Flashman, Birdseye view of Soho Square, 1754, TheLondonPictureArchives, The first ever Soho Fair in Soho Square 1955 - Iron Foot Jack entertainers - Westminster Archives