Oxford Street

From Hotels London Travel

Oxford Street - As wealthy Londoners began to move out of the City during the eighteenth century, in favour of the newly developed West End, so Oxford Street - the old Roman road to Oxford - gradually replaced Cheapside as London's main shopping street. Today, despite successive recessions and sky-high rents, this two-mile hotchpotch of shops is still one of the world's busiest streets, its Christmas lights switched on by the briefly famous, and its traffic controllers equipped with loud-hailers to prevent the hordes of Christmas shoppers from losing their lives at the busy road junctions.

Oxford Street is one and a half miles end to end. Most shops open 10am until 6 or 7pm. Some open Sunday 12 to 6pm with late nights on Thursday. Oxford Street is best known for Selfridges and the other big department stores which are all found in the section from Marble Arch to Oxford Circus, along with most of the big-name multinationals. It's more of the same as you continue towards Tottenham Court Road, but generally on a smaller scale. Oxford Street is said to be the busiest shopping street in Europe.

East of Oxford Circus, the street forms a scruffy border between Soho and Fitzrovia, and features London's two biggest music stores: HMV and Virgin Megastore. Marks & Spencer occupies one of the smartest, most historic sites: a black granite 1930s building on the south side of the street at no. 173 called the Pantheon after the vast rotunda built here in 1772 in the style of Constantinople's St Sophia, and at one time a very fashionable spot. M&S itself started life as a stall run by a Polish Jewish immigrant in Leeds market in 1912 under the slogan "Don't ask the price - it's a penny".

West of Oxford Circus is dominated by more upmarket stores, including the one great landmark, Selfridges, a huge Edwardian pile fronted by giant Ionic columns, with the Queen of Time riding the ship of commerce and supporting an Art Deco clock above the main entrance. The store was opened in 1909 by Chicago millionaire Gordon Selfridge, who flaunted its 130 departments with the slogan, "Why not spend a day at Selfridge's?". Selfridge's is credited with selling the world's first television set, as well as introducing the concept of the "bargain basement", "the customer is always, right", the irritating "only ten more shopping days to Christmas" countdown, and the nauseous bouquet of perfumes from the women's cosmetics counters, strategically placed at the entrance to all department stores to entice customers in. Selfridge himself was a big spender, ran into trouble with the Inland Revenue and was eventually pensioned off - he died in poverty at the age of ninety in 1947.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone has talked about making Oxford Street a traffic-free paradise, with breezy trams going up and down, but until that becomes even a remote reality, the street's ocean of consumers and stagnant traffic is likely to feel simultaneously overwhelming (in terms of its crowds) and underwhelming (regarding its offerings). This is where, however, you'll find the chain "headquarters" with massive H&Ms, Zaras, Urban Outfitters and large department stores such as John Lewis, Debenhams and Selfridges.