Escorts in WC2, the Strand and Covent Garden: who is close, and how soon
Why is a street that runs some way back from the Thames called the Strand? Because it was the shore. The word is Old English for a riverbank, and until the Victoria Embankment was built out into the river in the 1860s, the water came up to the gardens of the great houses on its southern side; the river moved and the name stayed. WC2 is full of evidence like that for anyone who knows where to look. Three names on the board live in Covent Garden, within the postcode itself, and for escorts in WC2 the wait runs to about an hour once the office confirms, a little longer when the theatres let out; her exact time comes through the chat and every length sits on the rates.
On the ground
WC2 in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameWC2R 0EZ, WC2B 4BZ, WC2H 9HB, WC2N 4HX, WC2H 7DX.
Nearest stations
Walking timeCovent Garden, 2 minutes. Leicester Square, 4 minutes. Charing Cross, 6 minutes. Temple, 8 minutes.
Getting there
WC2Travel 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 WC2
Who works here
On the board in WC2
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for WC2 tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Lundenwic, the town before the town
In the seventh and eighth centuries, long after the Romans had gone, London's trading town stood here rather than inside the old walls: Lundenwic, a settlement of Saxon merchants between the Strand and Covent Garden, whose remains turned up under the Royal Opera House when it was rebuilt in the 1990s. When King Alfred moved the town back inside the walls in the 880s, the empty site became the old wic, and the name survives as Aldwych.
Note 03
Palaces on the riverbank
For centuries the Strand was the road between the City and Westminster, and bishops and nobles lined its river side with great houses and gardens running down to the water. Nearly all are gone, but the street names keep them: Essex Street, Arundel Street, Northumberland Avenue, and Villiers Street and Buckingham Street for George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who owned York House. His watergate of 1626 still stands in Victoria Embankment Gardens, left high and dry by the embankment, and marks where the river once lapped. Somerset House, rebuilt from 1776 on the site of the Duke of Somerset's Tudor palace, still keeps the scale of that riverside line.
Note 04
An earl's piazza and a market
Covent Garden began as the convent garden of Westminster Abbey and passed to the Earls of Bedford. In the 1630s the fourth earl had Inigo Jones lay out London's first formal square, the Piazza, with St Paul's Church on its west side. A market took over the square within a generation, Charles Fowler's hall went up in 1830, and when the fruit and vegetable trade left for Nine Elms in 1974 the hall stayed, which is why the middle of the district still looks like a market with no produce in it.
Note 05
Theatres, courts and a road cut through
Drury Lane has had a theatre on the same site since 1663, and the present building dates from 1812; the Royal Opera House of 1858 is the third on its Bow Street site. Queen Victoria opened the Royal Courts of Justice at the eastern end of the Strand in 1882, and in 1905 Kingsway, running north to Holborn, and the Aldwych crescent were driven through the old lanes around Clare Market. Aldwych station closed in 1994, but its tiled front still stands on the Strand.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for WC2
Asked most often
WC2, asked and answered
Where can I still see where the river used to reach?
Why does St Paul's in Covent Garden seem to face the wrong way?
What does the name Aldwych mean?
One zone either way
Next along from WC2
escorts in Holborn
WC1V, WC2ASame ladder, same honest hour, a district partly inside this postcode.
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.