The Soho neighbourhood lies enclosed by Charing Cross Road, Leicester Square, Warwick Street and Oxford Street. The name is a reminder of the old cry of the harriers—Co, ho! The Square of Soho was part of the garden of the Duke of Monmouth whose home was what is now the south side of the square and occupied almost the entire space between the present Greek and Frith streets.
Frith Street extending south from Soho Square has an air of genteel poverty. In the block below the square on a low house of brick numbered 6 is a tablet:
William Hazlitt
1778-1833
Essayist
Died Here
Here he wrote some of his most notable essays and it was from this house that his body was taken to the quiet little churchyard of St. Anne's in Wardour Street.
In the block below the Hazlitt house at No. 7 Mozart lived when eight years old during the two years he remained in London with his father.
Beyond New Oxford Street to the south in High Street is the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. The fields of this day are the massed and dreary houses standing so close about the old church that they seem like to crowd it out of existence. But there is still a bit of green in the churchyard and among the tombstones a most interesting one telling that the body of Richard Pendrell lies buried here since 1671, and further reciting the story of how this Richard Pendrell was the preserver of the life of King Charles II. after the Battle of Worcester. St. Giles was built in 1734 and its spire Hogarth has put in his picture of "Beer Street."
Bloomsbury the heart of the boarding house district where Americans most congregate is enclosed by Tottenham Court Road, Southampton Road, Euston Road and on the south by Oxford Street and High Holborn. The name is a corruption of Blemundsbury, which was the manor of the de Blemunds when Henry III. was king.