Prescot Street was originally Great Prescott Street and ran along the south of Goodman’s Fields.
The road was developed for good-quality housing and it became one of the earliest London streets to have numbered buildings (rather than signs). An early resident, before he moved to Soho Square, was the ’rough old admiral’ Sir Cloudesley Shovel.
From the late nineteenth century there was a synagogue in the street, and between 1857 and 1880 the Jewish Widows’ Home Asylum. In the early twentieth century the Association for the Protection of Women and Girls ran a refuge for young girls arriving in London who were deemed at risk from pimps and procurers.
Little Prescot Street was the continuation of Mansell Street, running from the western end of Great Prescot Street to Royal Mint Street; its original name was Rosemary Branch Alley.
