West End of London
The
West End of London is an area of central
London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, businesses, and administrative headquarters. It also includes most of its major
theatres, and indeed the term "West End" has become synonymous with
London's commercial theatre (see
West End theatre). Colloquially and symbolically, the West End can be seen as one of three poles in
central London:
the City for finance (and to a lesser extent business in general),
Westminster for government (
Whitehall and
Parliament), and the West End for entertainment and retail.
Located to the west of the historic
Roman and
Mediaeval City of London, the West End was long favoured by the rich elite as a place of residence because it was usually upwind of the smoke drifting from the crowded City. It was also located close to the royal seat of power at
Westminster, and is largely contained within the
City of Westminster (one of the 32
London boroughs). Developed in the
seventeenth,
eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, it was originally built as a series of palaces, expensive town houses, fashionable shops and places of entertainment. The areas closest to the City around
Holborn,
Seven Dials and
Covent Garden historically contained poorer communities that were cleared and redeveloped in the nineteenth century.
The name "West End" is a flexible term with different meanings in different contexts. It may refer to the entertainment district around
Leicester Square and
Covent Garden; to the shopping district centred on
Oxford Street,
Regent Street, and
Bond Street (but the geographically distinct shopping district around
Knightsbridge would also be counted as "West End Shopping" by some); or, less commonly, to the whole of that part of
Central London (itself an area with no generally agreed boundaries) which lies to the west of the
City of London. It is one of two international centres identified in the
London Plan; the other is the Knightsbridge.One of the local government
wards within the
City of Westminster is called "West End". It is bounded by the
City of London to the east, the
Thames to the south east, Horseferry Road and
Victoria Street to the south,
Grosvenor Place to the west and
Piccadilly and
Long Acre to the north. [
1] This is quite a narrow boundary. However, in the United Kingdom, ward boundaries are generally only familiar to people involved in local politics and administration, and this ward carries little weight as an "official" definition of the West End, and is not intended to do so.
Taking a fairly broad definition of the West End, the district contains the main concentrations of most of London's metropolitan activities apart from financial services, which are concentrated primarily in the City of London. There are major concentrations of the following buildings and activities in the West End:
*Art galleries and museums
*Company headquarters outside the financial services sector (although London's many
hedge funds are based mainly in the West End)
*Educational institutions
*Embassies
*Government buildings (mainly around
Whitehall)
*
Hotels*Institutes,
learned societies and think tanks
*Legal institutions
*Media establishments
*Places of entertainment: theatres; cinemas; nightclubs; bars and restaurants
*Shops
The annual
New Year's Day Parade takes place on the streets of the West End.
These are the inner districts of the West End, which were all developed by about 1815:
*
Bloomsbury*
Holborn*
Covent Garden*
Seven Dials *
Soho*
Fitzrovia*
Westminster*
Marylebone*
Mayfair*
St. James'sThe districts to the south, north and west of
Hyde Park and
Kensington Gardens were developed between the end of the
Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the late 19th century, in some cases based on existing villages. The more fashionable of them were generally regarded as being in the West End at that time, but the extension of the term to these areas west of
Park Lane is less common nowadays. The last two listed especially are fringe cases:
*
Knightsbridge*
Belgravia*
Pimlico*
Chelsea*
South Kensington*
Bayswater*
Paddington*
Notting Hill*
Holland Park*
Charing Cross Road*
Oxford Street*
Regent Street*
Bond Street*
Shaftesbury Avenue*
Tottenham Court Road*
The Strand*
Piccadilly*
Kingsway*
Wardour Street*
Park Lane*
Leicester Square*
Trafalgar Square*
Berkeley Square*
Grosvenor Square*
Piccadilly Circus*
Oxford Circus*
Hyde Park Corner*
Marble Arch*
Soho Square
