stiddolph

Updated: May 23, 2025

When first made it was called Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph, and the later name was taken from that of Sir Frances Compton. Strype says, "All this part was very meanly built ... and greatly inhabited by French, and of the poorer sort," a character it retains to this day. Monmouth Street was notorious for its old-clothes shops, and is the subject of one of the "Sketches by Boz."

Sir Walter Besant - Holborn and Bloomsbury: The Fascination of London