encounters

soho’s quiet refuge

February 28, 2026

On our way to Trident Studios – where David Bowie recorded some of his hits – we cut through St Anne’s Court, that narrow passage between Dean Street and Wardour Street. There we noticed another tiny marker of Soho’s hidden stories: Clarion House.

A modest plaque reveals that this building stands on the site of a row of houses once home to generations of political exiles – radicals and refugees who found temporary shelter in Soho. Long before cocktail bars and recording studios, these cramped courts offered sanctuary to people escaping persecution.

The houses were demolished in 1967. Clarion House rose in their place decades later, thankfully as social housing rather than another restaurant or office.

In Soho, history rarely announces itself loudly. It hides in small plaques on plain buildings, waiting for someone curious enough to stop and read.