Streets of London : And such happens in Soho

This afternoon we saw another musical: An American in Paris, which was all song, dance and interwoven love story with an amazing amount of ballet. We were surprised by the ballet, but it was all quite delightful in a very Gershwin manner. Though some songs were so old that I didn't recognise them. The highlight for me was the stage craft. The settings were rarely still, so cleverly crafted, complex, and quite beautiful, and I would have enjoyed a tour just to see how they all are operated: some pushed, some pulled, some lowered, some raised, some unfurled. Miss Bec sobbed all through the second half. Aloud. Great hiccuping sobs. By the time the curtain went down I had a bulging handful of soggy wet tissues to find a home for. That tells us she really enjoyed it.

As the musical was in Soho we took a few hours to wander the area in detail. We often walk through bits of it. It reminds us of the West End at home, with its character and rumpled air. Recently, too, we have learned that an entire branch of Pete's family came from here so we like to think that explains why we are so drawn to it. We found the church in which some of them, Ann Jessup and her siblings, were all baptised in the early 1800's: St Anne's, Soho. It was once a small but lovely community church, with a village feel to it, set in a green space with room to breathe and bury the dead as this old borrowed image from a sketch shows. But the building was almost obliterated by the bombs of the blitz. Only the tower survived. The church land was sold off to build social housing in its green space. Funds from this sale covered the construction of a small memorial chapel and meeting room where the old church once stood, all of which is now crammed into a small opening in Dean Street that you would miss if you were not actively pursuing it.

But, a family find, nonetheless. Which gave us a very real sense of the place of this family. The amazing thing is that the parish records, from centuries back, have survived. So we can find the exact date of each baptism for each of Ann's siblings: some scrawled and blobbed with ink drops, others in copperplate perfection, depending on the skill and the mood of the vicar in the early 1800s. Brilliant records.

The area around St Anne's became home to many political refugees over the centuries: the early birds were Greek, then came French Huguenots escaping religious persecution at home, bringing with them their skills in silverwork, clock-making and silk weaving. So great were their numbers they filled half the parish of St Anne's by 1711, when there were some 3,500 French-speaking folk in just this neighbourhood alone. Italians, German workers and Russian Jews soon followed, as did many Chinese; though many of the Europeans returned home as the war broke out. Soho still has a bustling Chinatown in one section, but all the refugees have given Soho so much local colour and so much variation in cuisine that eating out is a real adventure here.

We ate lunch in a nook, called Koshari Street: a simple bowl of Koshari, an Egyptian national dish, that we can probably thank early camel traders for. We hunted this street food down after first trying it a couple months ago at a stall in the Borough Market. Koshari is a bowl with rice, macaroni and lentils at its base, heaped with chickpeas, doused in a spiced lime dressing poured from an exotic urn, sprinkled with a doqqa of spices, and, finally, finished off with a liberal handful of fine candied onions. Quite sensational. People queue down the street to eat this bowl of food, which is so simple to prepare, so healthy, but oh so delicious.

Our dessert, further on into Soho, was a little bit Italian, a little bit French, made by a tiny Chinese girl, who added a deft touch of English mint for flavour. Eclectic. Slices of sweet toasted panetonne were placed in a tower layered with cream, tiny marshmallows and nuts, with lashings of dripping chocolate to serve, and decorated with whole mint leaves. The combination created something that was a little bit weird, but a whole lot interesting: much like Soho, itself.

Some of the pubs have been around for ages, though not many date back as early as St Anne's parish records. The Salisbury was once an old Gin Palace: it still has its ornate etched glass windows and hand-carved wooden trim. These drinking haunts multiplied in this part of London as folk gradually found they had more money in their pockets as time went on. They hunted down interesting things to spend it on. Beer, typically, was drunk by men in dark tight spaces with snugs and cellars and heavy beamed ceilings that hung low to the head and sometimes connected. Gin became a little different. For a time it was the flavour of the moment: easily distilled and fun to try with different tastes, lemon and mint, for starters. Gin Palaces became rendezvous hangouts. It was a time of gas lighting so these were light airy venues, different from pubs; and windows were often built large, letting in the light. They were happy establishments where folk met to have a good time. Women, albeit those a little risqué, a little racy, with a touch of wild to their reputation, might be seen frequenting gin palaces. The Crown and Two Chairmen is another old place, reminiscent of a time when the well-heeled, or those with a crown to spare, could use a sedan chair to be carried home from a gin palace if that was their want. Or need.

Sebastian Horsley would likely have loved to travel by sedan chair. He lived in this house in Soho much like an eighteenth century dandy in the twenty-first century. The Beau Brummell of his time. Top hats, wild parties, loose men and looser women. Drugs and derring-do.

He once travelled to the Phillipines to be hung as Christ on a crucifix in an enactment of Christ's Passion. He passed out and had to be taken down from the cross. He once admitted publicly that he had slept with over a thousand people, and at one stage even turned his home into a brothel. So well known did it become that, later, when he decided to close it and have some peace, he had to put a sign on the door alerting callers that it was a brothel no longer. The sign is still there: just off Dean street, not far from St Anne's chapel.

Sebastian Horsley was conspicuous for being capricious. So much so that someone wrote a play about him and put it on in a theatre nearby. After the party, after a successful opening night, Sebastian went home, took an overdose of drugs, and died. Playing with fire ofttimes burns. And such happens in Soho.