This small street is now filled with smart bohemian shops – but in 19th century it had been a notorious area of slums. The journalist George Sala wrote in 1859: “There is a wretched little haunt called Bedfordbury, a devious, slimy little reptile of a place, whose tumble-down tenements and reeking courts spume forth plumps of animated rags, such as can be equalled in no London thoroughfare. I don’t think there are five windows in Bedfordbury with an unbroken pane of glass in them”. Imagine if Sala saw this street of expensive shops and fashionable Thai cafes now?! There is a charming traditional pub in the street called The Lemon Tree, which has won many awards for its real ales and beers. It's very popular with theatre-goers before and after shows. When English National Opera's theatre, the London Coliseum, was rebuilt in the 1990s, they made a strange discovery. Players of brass instruments – trumpets and trombones – are famous for their enjoyment of beer. It emerged that some ingenious orchestral players from English National Opera had connected a telephone in the Lemon Tree pub to the theatre's internal telephone system. They could enjoy a beer in the quiet parts of the opera, and their friends would call them when they were needed again.