For a decidedly short London road, little Store Street in Bloomsbury, which connects the scholarly precincts of London University with the furniture stores of Tottenham Court Road, delivers a pleasant hit of history. In 1791, ur-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft lived here, then wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 

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In case you didn’t know, I also lived on Store Street in the 1990s, back when it was, to be honest, a slightly shabby sideroad, with a greasy spoon and grubby offices. Arguably quaint, and definitely honest, but not somewhere you’d want to linger. 

Now, all is changed, changed utterly. In recent years Store Street has spruced up and become a destination in itself. Gone is the usual ghastly British parade of tatty vape stores and tacky phone repair shops, next to a Tesco Metro screaming about Value Burgers in Migraine Blue, next to a betting shop that closed down in 2020 and was taken over by ten pigeons and a skunk addict. 

How has Store Street avoided the fate of 97 per cent of British shopping streets? By imposing order, restraint, and dignity on the shopfronts. By insisting on certain colours, fonts, harmonious designs. By banishing cheap nasty souvenir stores that wheel their goods into the road so you can’t walk past, and instead renting the premises – with the signage rules agreed – to enticing........

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