Little Compton Street

If you peer through a metal grate within a traffic island situated on Charing Cross Road near the junction of Old Compton Street you will find a little piece of hidden history, a rumoured long buried street from Victorian London, Little Compton Street.

Little Compton Street was originally the eastern section of Old Compton Street and was the join between Old Compton Street and New Compton Street.

In 1886 the Metropolitan Board of Works demolished Little Compton Street and its surroundings which were one of Victorian Londons Slum districts in order to build a new road that connected Trafalgar Square to Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. The new road being named Charing Cross Road.

The signs that can still be seen today are part of a subway network that housed gas and water pipes and telegraph wires. The signs allowed workman while they were working within the subway to know where they were in the system thus eliminating the need to surface to get their bearings. The blue and white sign may possibly have been an original sign for Little Compton Street.