Around TownW1BPlatform to lobby: 1 min from Oxford Circus
Oxford Circus escorts after the shops shut, from Holles Street to Portland Place
Nobody at Oxford Circus looks up. While the shops are open the only thing worth watching is the pavement directly in front of you, and the junction fills and empties on the lights all day. Wait until the shutters come down and the sight lines open instead: one long straight view east and west along Oxford Street, and two very short ones, because Regent Street curves away both north and south and the view stops at the bend.
That was designed. John Nash drew his new street as a run of curves so that it never showed you more than one stretch at a time, and the result is a crossroads with a single vista and three interruptions. Oxford Circus escorts come to W1B after the tills are cashed up, and eight of the women on the list live inside W1, which keeps the arranging short.
Stations and lit lobbies
Walking minutes from the nearest platforms, and the hotels around Oxford Circus worth knowing by postcode. They are listed as landmarks, never as partners: any reputable hotel, serviced apartment or private address is welcome.
Nearest stations
- Oxford CircusBakerloo, Central, Victoria1 min walk
- Bond StreetCentral, Jubilee, Elizabeth line4 min walk
- Piccadilly CircusBakerloo, Piccadilly8 min walk
Hotels as landmarks
- W1B 1JAMarylebone
- W1B 2QSMarylebone
- W1B 4DYRegent Street
- W1T 3NPFitzrovia
- W1F 7HLSoho
- W1T 3NGFitzrovia
Who comes to Oxford Circus
Companions whose home districts sit nearest to Oxford Circus, so the ride over is short. Everyone in The Selection travels here on request.
Liana
Age 28Marylebone
Luna
Age 22Mayfair
Molly
Age 24Soho
Rosa
Age 25Marylebone
Samanta
Age 27Mayfair
Tiffany
Age 24Soho
Angelika
Age 24Mayfair
Jasmin
Age 22Soho
One straight line and three curves
Oxford Street runs dead straight through the junction, so on a clear evening you see a long way both ways, all of it lit shopfront at first floor height. Regent Street does the opposite. It was set out as a picturesque sequence rather than a boulevard, curving so that every stretch is a closed scene with a building at the end, and from the crossing you see no further than the next curve.
This is why the four corners read as four different places rather than as one square. No single view contains them, and the only way to take the junction in is to stand still on it after nine, when there is room to turn round.
The wide street going north
Portland Place, which runs north from the top of Regent Street, was laid out in the 1770s by Robert and James Adam and is unusually wide, wide enough to read as an avenue rather than as a street. Nash later hooked his own thoroughfare onto its southern end, which is why the two do not line up and why the join has to be made with a bend.
The view up Portland Place is the best long one in this part of W1, and it does not begin at the junction; you have to walk to the top of Regent Street to get it. Between dinner and going back, that is the most rewarding short walk here.
A Hepworth on a shop wall
High on the Oxford Street face of John Lewis, at the Holles Street corner, is an aluminium sculpture by Barbara Hepworth called Winged Figure. It has been up there since 1963, fixed flat against the stone, and a great many people walk underneath without noticing it.
Look at it from the far kerb rather than from below, and after the shop's own lighting has finished for the night rather than during the day. It is the strongest argument there is for the after hours version of this junction.
Who was born under the store
Byron was born in 1788 in a house on Holles Street, on the ground the department store now covers, and a plaque on the wall records it. The house itself went a long time ago. The plaque can be read from the pavement, a few steps from the Hepworth, which makes one corner of this junction oddly literary.
Holles Street is worth knowing for a duller reason too. It is short, it leaves the north side of Oxford Street, and it is quiet once the shops are shut, which is more than the junction ever manages.
The year the crossing had a roof
In August 1963 a steel deck was put up over Oxford Circus, standing on legs at the corners, so that road traffic could keep crossing while the ticket hall for the Victoria line was dug out underneath. It was known as the umbrella, it went up across a single weekend, and it stayed about five years.
For those years the junction had a ceiling, and the photographs are strange: buses running over a bridge above a hole, with the shop fronts either side carrying on regardless. The station below is the reason this is the one place in W1 where the pavement can be fuller than the road.
The junction after the tills
Oxford Circus station is a minute's walk from any corner, and Bond Street station four. Neither is the point of an evening here. The point is that between about eight and about ten the district hands itself back: the buses thin out, the crossing clears, and the lit windows have nobody standing in front of them.
Tell Clementine the address, the hour and the length. One name and one price come back, the building and the room are checked once, and then reckon on about an hour before she is at the door, with the time of her leaving sent on to you. Payment is made to her face to face as she comes in, and from £250 an hour what it buys is her time and her company; the journey to any door within Zones 1 and 2 is absorbed, and beyond the Zone 2 boundary a single figure is worked out and shown in the confirmation before you agree, which is all the rates says on the subject.
Leaving the crossing
Oxford Street runs out of the junction in both directions and is a different street on either side of it. Bond Street station is a four minute walk west, and the frontages around it change from chains to windows with one object in them. Fitzrovia starts a street or two to the north east, where the windows stop altogether.
Oxford Circus, asked
Winged Figure, an aluminium sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, fixed to the Oxford Street face of the building at the Holles Street corner in 1963. It is best seen from the opposite kerb, and better once the shop lighting is off.
Byron's. He was born in 1788 in a house on Holles Street, on ground the building now covers, and a plaque on the wall says so. The house went a long time ago.
Because it was never meant to be seen along. Nash set it out in curves, each stretch closed by a building, so the view from the crossing stops at the bend in both directions.
Yes, from August 1963. A steel deck on corner legs carried the traffic while the Victoria line ticket hall was built underneath it, and it stood about five years before coming down again.
Oxford Street, east and west, because it is straight. Portland Place is the finer of the two, wide and formal, but you cannot see it from here; you have to walk up to the top of Regent Street first.
Read before you go
- 6 min readDown the area steps: Fitzrovia's cocktail dens, north of Oxford StreetNorth of Oxford Street the best glasses are poured below the pavement. How to find Fitzrovia's basement bars, read a door with no sign, order well in low light and pace two rooms in one night.
- 6 min readArtesian hours: W1B 1JA, where Regent Street turns into Portland PlaceLondon's first grand hotel sits where the shops give way to Portland Place. Three rooms downstairs, one famous bar, and how an evening there is timed from the first glass to the last.
Lights on in Oxford Circus
Write the hotel or street in Oxford Circus, the time and how long. Inside Zones 1 and 2 the ride over costs nothing.