Fareham Street

Fareham Street is a short turning near the northern edge of Soho, close to Oxford Street and a few steps from the eastern side of Dean Street. It belongs to the wave of building that turned the open ground of Soho into a dense network of streets between the 1670s and the early eighteenth century, when much of the district took the names of landowners, patrons and other figures of the period.

The street was laid out in the early eighteenth century as Titchfield Street, taking its name from the Marquess of Titchfield, a title connected with the Portland family who held land in this part of London. It was renamed Fareham Street in 1950 after the Hampshire town, removing a duplication with other Titchfield Streets in the area.

Soho around it carries layers of trade history: the music and recording businesses that clustered along Wardour Street, the rag trade and market stalls of Berwick Street to the west, and a long record of Huguenot and later Italian and Greek settlement. Fareham Street itself is a quiet, workaday corner rather than a showpiece, lined with commercial frontages and serving as a connecting route through the blocks behind Oxford Street.