Leicester Place

Leicester Place runs north from the top of Leicester Square towards Lisle Street, on the southern edge of Soho. It occupies ground once held by Leicester House, the mansion built for Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester, between about 1631 and 1635. The house was demolished around 1791 to 1792, and the street that emerged formed a closing feature to the view along the north side of the square.

The position kept Leicester Place close to the entertainment trades that grew up around Leicester Square. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the area drew French visitors, and the wider quarter carried a continental character in its hotels and shops. The street is best known today for the Roman Catholic church of Notre Dame de France, rebuilt after wartime damage and decorated with murals by Jean Cocteau in 1959, and for the cinema that has stood on the street for decades.

Leicester Place is short and largely given over to leisure use, sitting between the cinemas and restaurants of the square and the Chinese businesses of Lisle Street. It is a few minutes' walk from the theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue and the older streets of central Soho.