From Selfridges to Trafalgar Square

This walk will take you from the bustle of Oxford Street down to Trafalgar Square with some well-earned refreshment at the end of it. Let’s start at Selfridges, which is on London’s busiest street and ultimate shopping destination - Oxford Street. It's easiest to get here via Bond Street Tube station or on a bus to Oxford Circus or Marble Arch.
Work began on the Selfridges building in 1907 and it opened to the public 2 years later.
Selfridges window displays weren’t just about merchandising, they were about theatre and spectacle. The chap behind Selfridges, Mr Gordon Selfridge from Chicago, was really a sort of showman, a Barnum and Bailey character.
Now most big London stores started as just a small shop, but this place was designed from the outset to be a vast department store - Gordon Selfridge wanted to create a retail palace!
Now for a walk down New Bond Street. It’s one of London’s chicest store, so I’m told, and home to all your designer clothing needs.
About half a mile down, if you can resist the lure of all those terribly fashionable shops, you’ll reach Old Bond Street. Keep your eyes open for Burlington Gardens on your left, turn down it, then turn right into Burlington Arcade.
This, the Burlington Arcade, was built in 1818, and at 589 feet is the longest in Britain.
The arcade was actually a French idea, but it quickly came over to England probably because of our rotten weather. It was actually brought here by Lord George Cavendish, who’d been to Paris. And there he saw the Passage des Panoramas and he realised it was a great financial success, and thought it might work here. There’s another story that he was fed up with people coming out of the gin and oyster bars and chucking all the remains over his garden wall and the smell was absolutely disgusting. And yet another theory is that his wife demanded somewhere where she could go shopping with her friends in peace and quiet and not have to mix, you know, with the riff-raff.
When you come out of the Arcade, cross Piccadilly and head down St James’s Street which you come to just before you reach the Ritz - don’t worry, there’ll be time for tea later.
The shops at St James’s have traditionally been associated with luxury, wealth and exclusivity and this all started because retailers came to be near the court which had moved to St James’s Palace in 1698. And remarkably one of those shops is still trading today - the wine merchants Berry Brothers & Rudd.
Carry on to the bottom of St James's Street and turn left for a stroll along Pall Mall. Did you know that St James’s Palace, on your right, was a leper hospital before Henry VIII turned it into a palace? Carry on across Waterloo place, the statue on the tall column on your right is probably the real Grand Old Duke of York who had ten thousand men. He took an army to fight the French in Flanders but it didn’t go very well and many believe that was the inspiration for the famous nursery rhyme. Finally, Trafalgar Square, home to a much more famous statue and a real military hero.
Trafalgar Square was designed by Sir Charles Berry in 1838. And a couple of years later, architect William Railton started work on a column to commemorate vice-admiral Lord Nelson who’d been killed during his decisive victory over the French and Spanish fleets in 1805 - so the square came to be called Trafalgar Square. I was lucky, I turned up during a major restoration of the entire column, which gave me a rare opportunity to see the cleaning process and a chance to see Horatio himself, up close. The four bronze bas-reliefs were made from French guns captured by Admiral Nelson himself and depict his greatest triumphs - the victory of Cape St Vincent, the bombardment of Copenhagen, the victory of the Nile, and finally, Trafalgar.
Well, that’s the end of this tour. I hope you found it interesting. You could probably use a sit down now and a glass of something refreshing. Why not head up St Martin’s Lane to the Salisbury? Much of its original Victorian decor is still in place and they do a great range of ales, good bye!