Around the crescent: playhouses, grand hotels and the shortest walk home in the West End

A shoreline that turned into a street

The Strand takes its name from the old word for a shore, and for centuries that is exactly what it was: the road along the top of the Thames bank, lined with the palaces of bishops and nobles whose gardens ran down to the water. The river only retreated when Joseph Bazalgette built the Victoria Embankment in the 1860s, pushing the bank out and burying a new sewer beneath the gardens. Stand at the bottom of any of the lanes that drop south from the Strand and you are standing on land that used to be mud.

The Aldwych is newer and grander. Its name comes from the Old English for an old settlement, a memory of the Saxon trading town that stood here long before the medieval city, but the crescent itself was cut through a maze of narrow streets in the first years of the twentieth century, together with Kingsway, and lined with confident Edwardian buildings. The result is a curve of road that bends away from the Strand and back again, with theatres, hotels and institutions shoulder to shoulder all the way round.

Five playhouses on one curve

Count them as you go. On the crescent itself stand a matched pair, the Aldwych Theatre and the Novello, both designed by W. G. R. Sprague and opened in 1905, with the Waldorf Hotel set between them a few years later so that the three buildings read as one grand composition. The Novello was called the Strand Theatre until 2005, when it was renamed for Ivor Novello, the composer and matinee idol who lived for years in a flat above it.

Along the Strand itself, the Vaudeville dates from 1870 and keeps a modest front that hides a pretty auditorium. The Adelphi was rebuilt in 1930 with an Art Deco interior that still feels glamorous. And the Savoy Theatre, opened in 1881 by Richard D'Oyly Carte for the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, was the first public building in the world lit entirely by electricity; its entrance is tucked into the courtyard it shares with the hotel. The Lyceum, the Duchess and Drury Lane are all within a couple of minutes, but five on one curve is already a remarkable density.

Grand hotels at both ends of the evening

Two grand old hotels anchor the street. The Savoy opened in 1889 on the profits of those same Gilbert and Sullivan operas and still faces the river with a confidence few buildings can match; its bars and rooms have their own entry. The Waldorf, now the Waldorf Hilton, opened in 1908 between the twin theatres and is best known for its Palm Court, once the home of London's most famous tea dances.

The twentieth century added two more. One Aldwych, on the point of the crescent in the old newspaper building, is small, calm and much loved, and is described in the One Aldwych notes. ME London, a few steps along the Strand, has a soaring triangular atrium and a rooftop bar with one of the best river views on this side of the water. Between them, there is a hotel lobby within two minutes of every stage door on the street.

Churches in the traffic and a palace by the river

The Strand is famous for two churches that sit on islands in the middle of the road. St Mary le Strand, designed by James Gibbs and completed in the 1710s, is small, elegant and marooned between two streams of buses. Further east, St Clement Danes, rebuilt by Wren and restored after the Blitz, is the central church of the Royal Air Force and one of the churches that claims the bells of Oranges and Lemons.

Between the two churches, on the island of buildings inside the crescent, stand Bush House, for decades the home of the BBC World Service, and Australia House, with its great marble hall. On the river side, Somerset House is the finest building on the street, an eighteenth century palace of government around a vast courtyard, now home to the Courtauld Gallery, exhibitions and a river terrace that opens onto one of the loveliest views in London. At 216 Strand, a narrow shopfront has been selling Twinings tea since 1706, and at the far east end a dragon on a stone plinth marks where the Strand becomes Fleet Street and Westminster gives way to the City.

Beneath the pavement

Two oddities lie out of sight. On Surrey Street, the red tiled front of Aldwych station still stands, though its last train ran in 1994; it sat at the end of a short branch from Holborn, is now used for filming and is occasionally opened for tours. And down Strand Lane, visible through a window, lies the so called Roman bath, a small brick plunge pool that is almost certainly not Roman at all but has enchanted visitors since Dickens sent David Copperfield to bathe in it.

The good night walk, timed

This is where the geography earns its keep. When the house lights come up at the Aldwych or the Novello, the Waldorf's doors are next door and One Aldwych is across the road; you can be seated in a hotel bar within three minutes of the curtain call. From the Savoy Theatre, the hotel is in the same courtyard. From the Adelphi or the Vaudeville, ME London and The Savoy are a two minute walk.

If the evening wants a little more air, the river is closer than it seems. Five minutes from the Aldwych, Waterloo Bridge gives you the whole curve of the Thames lit up in both directions, and the Victoria Embankment Gardens below the Savoy lead down to Cleopatra's Needle, the ancient Egyptian obelisk that has stood by the water since 1878. It is one of the shortest, and most beautiful, walks home in central London.

Company for the crescent

Luna starts her Strand evenings on the ME London rooftop, times the booking for the light on the water and is one of the auburn companions, easy to spot across a busy bar. Michelle likes the courtyard at Somerset House for a first drink and has a knack for turning a table of strangers into a party. Angelika prefers the late piano sets in the cellar room near the Aldwych and is the one to ask when the night is only starting at half past ten.

Two hours at £500 covers a drink after the curtain and the walk to the river; three hours at £700 adds a late supper. The format built for this part of the evening is described as the nights out engagement. The street is covered in full on the Strand and Aldwych page, Waterloo is just across the bridge, and every figure is on the rates page.