English: When does a narrow lane become an interesting and attractive alleyway? Well maybe when it's called a court or a place.

And probably if it's wide enough for some tables, flower planters, and 'A'-boards outside posh shops. With awnings to shelter from any rain. Plus refurbished Victorian buildings and some old-fashioned gas-lamp-style street lights. Cheerful brightly coloured flowers in window boxes help too.

St Christopher's Place has the huge advantage that it's near a busy and popular part of town with enough money flowing through the businesses to keep everything clean and well maintained.

St Christopher's Place leads to Barrett Street - which is pedestrianised - and then to Gee's Court - another alley. The three together offer what Jane Jacobs called the : "intricacy of sidewalk use". And so attracts some of the thousands of passers-by from Oxford Street and Wigmore Street main roads at either end.

From one viewpoint it is simply an upmarket shopping & dining mall. Although open to the sky. You can see this more clearly when it widens out into Barrett Street - between Gee's Court and St Christopher's Place. There are even some benches where a few people can rest and watch the world go by. Without paying for a coffee. But actually there's quite a bit more to it.

Ivor Hoole's website

An unexpected pleasure and treasure of the internet is coming across websites like Ivor Hoole's A Guide to London’s alleys, courtyards and passages.   Not all the alleys are still there. But many are and it's interesting to see changes since he compiled his guide. Probably most of his entries were written in the mid 1990s. It seems that Ivor Hoole himself died in 2005.   Luckily Ivor Hoole's fascinating site was mirrored by Phil Gyford. And by Ian Mansfield who writes his own interesting Ian Visits blog.

Octavia Hill Here's the link to what the short piece Ivor Hoole wrote about St Christopher's Place. Which you may want to read it if you're curious and enjoy exploring new alleyways.

Just like many alleys, it leads to somewhere else. In my case to the question of what happened to the residents of what Ivor Hoole described as "In the mid-19th century ... a truly filthy place; a typical uncared for back alley, a repository for waste and rubbish". Hoole wrote that the housing reformer Octavia Hill came across the Court in 1870 and:

"was so shocked at the state of dilapidation that she bought it in readiness for preparing future plans. Renovation work was put into operation in 1874 and at the beginning of 1877 all the newly refurbished shops were let, and Miss Hill commented that it was 'going so beautifully'."

One source suggests an answer to my question. The website "Municipal Dreams" reviewed the book Octavia Hill a life more noble which set out her approach.

As well as refurbishing Victorian buildings: ... "she was adamant that her homes should be affordable to the poorest. Writing of Barrett’s Court (which Hill renamed St Christopher’s Place) off Oxford Street, she argued ‘if we had rebuilt, we must have turned [the existing tenants] out in favour of a higher class, thus compelling them to crowd in courts as bad as Barrett’s Court itself was when we bought it’. This had been precisely the deficiency of contemporary model dwelling schemes and would be the fault of the Boundary Estate, the LCC’s first housing scheme. It remained the case that council housing into the interwar period was beyond the reach of many of the lowest paid workers."

"... her overall stance would acquire a surprising later resonance. Hill opposed the utilitarian (though ‘model’) tenement schemes of her day, the block dwellings, but also rejected their supposed alternative, working-class suburban cottage estates. In that regard, the unfashionable Octavia Hill comes close to the criticisms made after her death of many later municipal developments. Her support for affordable inner-city living for the poor and the street life in which it rested is a cause which echoes to the present." ___________________________________

§ Click on the blue link for another peek into St Christopher's Place with Google Streetview . § St Christopher's Place Christmas lighting has become a London attraction in itself. Here's a link to a 2014 photo by Joyce Dela Paz. Links to two 2009 photos by Eddie Clarke ( 1 ), ( 2 ). One more by Jonathan Whiteland in 2013 § A quotation from Jane Jacobs: Death and Life of Great American Cities.

— "Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvellous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance [....] an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole".