Shaftesbury Avenue, named after the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, runs in a north-easterly direction from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus. It was built between 1877 and 1886 by the architect George Vulliamy and the engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette as a combined work of traffic improvement and slum clearance. Small streets and alleyways were swallowed up in the process, including, on this stretch, Monmouth Court, home to the renowned Seven Dials printer of ballads and broadsheets, Jemmy Catnach (1792-1841).
