Windmill Theatre, Great Windmill Street, London 1972

This 1972 view of Great Windmill Street captures one of Soho’s most recognisable theatre frontages, with the brightly lit Windmill sign and illuminated windmill dominating the street. The theatre entrance is busy with posters and neon, including the lower Cinema sign and the strip-club style presentation associated with the Windmill in its later years, while the huge vertical Dunlop advertisement on the corner building gives the whole scene a strong West End commercial feel. At street level, there is a wealth of period detail: the National Westminster Bank branch on the corner, a Marshall’s dairies delivery lorry, the Newman’s Chocolates sign on the right, a Sauna Baths sign further down the street, a black cab at the left edge, and a crowd of pedestrians in early-1970s dress filling the foreground. More than a simple theatre photograph, it records the dense mixture of banking, nightlife, advertising and everyday street traffic that defined this part of Soho before later redevelopment and changing entertainment habits altered the character of Great Windmill Street.