Bourchier Street

Bourchier Street is a short turning running between Wardour Street and Dean Street in the southern part of Soho. Its line is older than most of the area around it: the route is marked on a plan of 1585 as a hedge that divided land once held by the Abbot and Convent of Abingdon to the north from the open St Giles's (later Soho) Fields to the south.

The street has changed names more than once. A plan of 1664 records it as Hedge Lane, and it first appears in the parish ratebooks as Milk Alley in 1692. It kept that name until 1838, when it became Little Dean Street. The present name dates only from 1937, when it was renamed in memory of the Reverend Basil Bourchier, rector of St Anne's from 1930 to 1933, who died in 1934.

The wider patch has a strong claim on the origin of the district's name: a house standing at or near the north corner of Wardour Street and Bourchier Street in the 1630s and 1640s was recorded as 'So:ho'. Today the lane is narrow and quiet, lined with the backs of buildings facing the larger streets, and sits a few steps from Wardour Street.