Four and five storey fronts stand on narrow plots, with bars and restaurants at street level. Edgar Wright shot Last Night in Soho on these streets.
What Soho looks like
Four and five storey fronts sit on narrow plots, brick above and painted stucco at street level. Bars and restaurants take nearly every ground floor, with offices and flats on the storeys over them. runs east to west through the middle, from Charing Cross Road to .
The roadways take one lane and the buildings meet the pavement with no setback. is a single lane of granite setts between brick fronts and iron railings, with bollards down both kerbs. Its western half is closed to cars, and the terraces along it date from the 1720s and 1730s.
holds market stalls under square gazebos from Monday to Saturday. runs north to the plane trees of , past Ronnie Scott's at number 47 and the Bar Italia clock opposite.
Post production companies work on these streets and the British Board of Film Classification is on the square. Westminster wants around three months of notice to close a street here. The only quiet hours are between three and half past seven in the morning.
Shot in Soho
Edgar Wright shot Last Night in Soho on these streets, working nights inside timed road closures Westminster booked months in advance. In July 2020, with the shoot paused four months into the first lockdown, Wright took a small camera crew out for one night and filmed the empty streets.
Last Night in Soho, 2021
Frith Street
Played 1965
The long shot of Jack driving Sandie through a 1965 street was staged here, with period signage put up along the fronts overnight. The same dressing continued round into Bateman Street for the turn toward the theatre entrance at 12-13 Greek Street, which the film calls the Rialto.
Last Night in Soho, 2021
Eloise first sees the silver haired man in the doorway of 88 Dean Street, a stationer with a restored Georgian front. The red phone box she looks through was brought in for the shot. The production closed the street for a night. People were still on it, and Matt Smith found friends of his coming out of the Groucho Club in the middle of a take.
Last Night in Soho, 2021
Bourchier Street
Eloise and John come off a bus on Shaftesbury Avenue, run up Rupert Street and then cut from Wardour Street into Bourchier Street in the rain. It is a service alley paved in stone flags, with roller shutters and back doors along the brick and painted walls on both sides.
Temple Bar's lanes are as narrow as these, and pubs and restaurants take the ground floors along Fownes Street and Eustace Street the way they do here. Dublin cobbles those lanes end to end where most of these roadways are asphalt, so a shot that holds much of the road gives the difference away. Bilingual street plates would need changing at any corner. Try searching narrow lanes with pubs now.
Four and five storey brick fronts stand over the restaurants and cafes on Hanover Street and Salem Street, on a street plan as tight as this one. The buildings are tenements dating from the 1880s, so the period they play starts later than these terraces. Iron fire escapes hang over the North End's narrow passages and there are none on these streets, so a frame that stays on the ground floor holds the match best. Boston's alleys also open off the main streets at angles where this grid keeps its lines parallel. Try searching brick tenements over restaurants now.
Elfreth's Alley in Old City is a cobbled lane of small brick houses from the 1720s onward, the same material and roughly the same decade as the terraces on Meard Street. Those houses are two and three storeys against four and five here, and many are Philadelphia trinity houses with one room to a floor. The comparison holds at a doorway or in a low frame and nowhere wider. Try searching small brick houses now.
.jpg)
