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Shaftesbury Avenue
Piccadilly Circus. (W1) Opened in 1885, has obliterated (amongst other ancient thoroughfares) Monmouth Street, named after the Duke of Monmouth, whose house was in Soho Square. Monmouth Street was notorious for its old-clothes shops, and is the subject of one of the Sketches by Boz. All the ground to the south of Shaftesbury Avenue was anciently, if not actually a pond, at all events, very marshy ground, and was called Meershelands, or Marshlands. It was subsequently known as Cock and Pye Fields, from the "Cock and Pye" public-house which is supposed to have been situated at the spot where Little St. Andrew Street, West Street, and Castle Street now meet. (Holborn, Besant and G. E. Mitton, p. 21)
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