Bridle Lane

Bridle Lane runs between Brewer Street and Beak Street on the western side of Soho, close to Golden Square. It takes its name from Abraham Bridle, a carpenter who held leases on parts of Gelding Close and built houses along the lane in the 1680s, during the speculative development that turned the old Windmill Fields into streets.

As a narrow passage set between two lines of larger houses, it began life as a mews. By the 1720s, when this part of Soho had been rebuilt to broadly the layout seen today, Bridle Lane was made up of stables and service buildings backing onto the grander frontages facing Golden Square and the former Great Pulteney Street. That mix of workshop and dwelling, gentry homes alongside artisans' premises, was characteristic of early Soho.

The lane has kept its modest scale. It remains a tight, low-rise route used as a cut-through and for the small trades and businesses that have long suited Soho's side streets, set just back from the busier frontages of Brewer Street. The name records a single builder whose work on this corner of the district has outlasted almost everything he put up.