Escorts in Tottenham Court Road, W1T and WC1: who is close, and how soon
"Furniture at the top, guitars at the bottom and books round every corner" is how Sylvie at the office sums up Tottenham Court Road, and it is a fair map of the shopping. The road runs north from its junction with Oxford Street for the best part of a mile, and the kind of shop changes as it goes: chain flagships at the crossing, a thinning line of electronics dealers, then the furniture and lighting showrooms that have given the northern end its character since Victorian times. For Tottenham Court Road escorts, the natural shape of a day here is an afternoon among the shops, the bags taken back to the room, and an evening that begins somewhere quieter.
On the ground
Tottenham Court Road in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameW1T 1RJ, WC1B 3NN, W1T 3NP, W1D 3SE, WC1B 5BE.
Nearest stations
Walking timeTottenham Court Road, 1 minute. Goodge Street, 4 minutes. Oxford Circus, 8 minutes.
Getting there
W1T, WC1Travel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Tottenham Court Road
Who works here
On the board in Tottenham Court Road
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for Tottenham Court Road tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Beds and sideboards since the Victorians
The northern stretch has sold furniture for the better part of two centuries. In the nineteenth century the road was lined with cabinet makers and upholsterers, and two great furniture houses grew up on it, Maple's and Heal's. The Maple's name left the road long ago, but Heal's, which moved here in 1840, still trades from its building towards the northern end.
The showrooms around it sell lighting, sofas, rugs and design pieces to people furnishing flats all over London. It is the most unhurried part of the road to shop in, and the one where an afternoon most easily loses track of time, because every floor has somewhere to sit down and argue about colours.
Note 03
The years of wires and speakers
Further south, from the 1970s into the early 2000s, Tottenham Court Road was where London went for hi-fi, cameras and computers, a long row of electronics dealers with windows stacked with boxes and handwritten price cards.
Most of them have gone, replaced by phone shops, cafés and chains, but a few specialists hang on among them. It is no longer the place to spend a Saturday comparing amplifiers, though anyone who remembers those years will still recognise the rhythm of the shopfronts.
Note 04
Denmark Street and the bookshops
Just south of the junction, Denmark Street is a short lane of guitar and music shops, still called Tin Pan Alley after the music publishers who crowded into it during the twentieth century. Instruments hang in the windows three deep, and somebody is nearly always trying one out.
A few steps away, Charing Cross Road keeps up its old trade in books, new and second-hand. Neither street is the place for a quick purchase; both are the place for an hour of browsing before an evening starts, and for a present that nobody else would have thought of.
Note 05
Bloomsbury's side streets for a gift
East of the road the shopping gets smaller and older. Store Street, leading east off Tottenham Court Road, keeps a short run of independent shops and cafés with a neighbourhood feel that the main road lost long ago.
Further in, beside the British Museum, Museum Street has long been known for old prints and antiquarian books. It is the sort of street where a framed map or a first edition can turn up in a single visit, or not at all, and where nobody hurries you either way.
Note 06
From the last till to the first table
The shops close before the evening really begins, and the gap between the two is the useful part. Drop the bags at the hotel, change, and the evening can begin in the streets on either side of the road: Fitzrovia's dining rooms to the west, or Soho, south across Oxford Street, for something later and louder.
Soho Square, just below the junction, has a garden with benches for anyone who needs to sit down between the last shop and the first drink. What the hours hold after that is yours to shape, a table, a bar or a quiet room, and if the afternoon's shopping is part of the plan, say so when you write, and she comes dressed for the shops as well as the dinner.
Note 07
The junction on the board
The junction itself is home to nobody on the board. Three live in Soho, just to the south, and three more in Covent Garden to the south-east, so escorts in Tottenham Court Road are seldom starting from far away. Allow an hour or so from the moment the office confirms until she is with you, more while Oxford Street is choked at the end of the working day, and look to the chat for her time as she sets out and to the rates for the lengths.
The streets around the junction are Soho, Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury, and the booking page sets out what to send the office.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Tottenham Court Road
Asked most often
Tottenham Court Road, asked and answered
Where do the furniture showrooms begin?
Are any of the old electronics shops left?
Can the booking begin while the shops are still open?
Is Denmark Street worth a detour without a guitar in mind?
Where can we sit down after the shopping?
Which street suits a gift that is not from a chain?
One zone either way
Next along from Tottenham Court Road
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.