Newport Place

Newport Place sits at the southern edge of Soho, within the cluster of streets that make up London's Chinatown alongside Gerrard Street, Wardour Street and Macclesfield Street. Its modern character dates from the postwar decades, when Chinese families, many of them arriving from Hong Kong, moved into the area from the older settlement at Limehouse and opened restaurants, grocers and trading businesses.

In the late 1980s, parts of Newport Place were pedestrianised along with Gerrard Street and Macclesfield Street, and Chinese gates, street furniture and a pavilion were added to give Chinatown a defined public identity. The Newport Place pavilion became a well-known meeting point for more than thirty years before it was taken down in 2016.

Today the short street remains busy with restaurants and supermarkets serving the Chinese community and the many visitors who come to eat here. It functions as one of the connecting spaces of Chinatown rather than a single landmark, linking the pedestrian core to the wider grid of Soho. The mix of everyday trade and ceremonial street furniture makes it a useful place to read how a 20th-century immigrant community shaped this corner of the West End.