Tottenham Court Road

Tottenham Court Road (occasionally abbreviated as TCR) is a major road in Central London, almost entirely within the London Borough of Camden.

The road runs from Euston Road in the north to St Giles Circus in the south; Tottenham Court Road tube station lies just beyond the southern end of the road. Historically a market street, it became known for selling electronics and white goods in the 20th century.

The street takes its name from the former manor (estate) – which was the location of a royal court at times – of Tottenham Court, whose lands lay toward the north and west of the road, in the parish of St Pancras. Tottenham Court had no direct connection with the district of Tottenham (which is now in the London Borough of Haringey).

Tottenham Court Road runs from Euston Road in the north to St Giles Circus (the junction of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road) at its southern end, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km). The road lies almost entirely within the London Borough of Camden near its boundary with the City of Westminster.

South of Torrington Place (originally Francis Street) the road marks the traditional boundary of the parishes of St Pancras (of which the manor of Tottenham Court was part) to the west, and St Giles to the east (due to longstanding shared administrative arrangements, St Giles is often described as a part of Bloomsbury). North of Torrington Place, both sides of the road are in St Pancras.

The term Fitzrovia was first coined in the late 1930s as an informal description for some of the surrounding area. Tottenham Court Road is sometimes used to distinguish Fitzrovia to the west from Bloomsbury to the east (St Giles often being thought of as part of Bloomsbury). Fitzrovia has never had any formal limits applied, and its informal extent is sometimes also said to extend further east to Gower Street, thus potentially overlapping with the more formal definitions applied to St Giles and Bloomsbury.

The south end of the road is close to the British Museum and to Centre Point, the West End's tallest building. There are a number of buildings belonging to University College London along the road, and University College Hospital is near the north end of the road.

The origin of the road's name is that it is the road to the Manor of Tottenham Court. The manor house lay just to the north of the road's junction with Euston Road.