This small neighbourhood centred around the Victoria Embankment Gardens and Embankment Underground station contains a small number of very expensive flats, tucked away to the east of Trafalgar Square. Much of the residential areas are quiet despite their central location, apart from Villiers Street to the neighbourhood’s south, which contains not only a dense parade of shops, but also the bustling Charing Cross station.

Embankment tube station is also located to the south, providing excellent accessibility in the form of Circle, District, Northern, and Bakerloo line services throughout the city. Unique to this area is the Embankment Pier, which serves as the western most terminus for the Thames Clipper line RB1, the main river-based commuter service in London, which travels all the way east to Woolwich. Victoria Embankment Gardens takes up the eastern half of the neighbourhood and offers the public an area of solace on the banks of the Thames and leads to the famous Hungerford and Golden Jubilee Bridges, which takes commuters and workers alike down to Waterloo.

The majority of the neighbourhood was just boggy foreshore, underwater at high tide, up until 1865 when construction started on the Victoria Embankment with the intention of constructing a modern sewerage system and relieving congestion on the Strand and Fleet Street. The Hungerford Bridge and Charing Cross station had been built the previous year to accommodate overseas boat and internal rail travel, and traffic was increasing at a rapid pace. Under the supervision of Joseph Bazalgette, the project was completed in 1870, along with the construction of Embankment Underground station, which was opened in the same year, and the Victoria Embankment Gardens which were finished in 1874.

In 1905 the roof of Charing Cross collapsed killing six people, which led to a largescale enquiry into the design of station roofs as well as the rearrangement of the station’s ground floor. The area sustained substantial damage during the Second World War, leading to sporadic closures to the stations, most notably in 1944 when a span of Hungerford Bridge was taken out and Charing Cross closed from June until December. Redevelopment began on Charing Cross station in 1986 and finished in 1990.

Tucked away to the south of the area, just bordering the Gardens, is Buckingham Street, which has been called home by a number of famous faces over the years. These include diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) and the former Emperor of Russia, Peter the Great (1672-1725), who both lived in a house on the site of the grand building now at number 14, and the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), who lived at number 20.

The development of the Victoria Embankment cost a total of £1,710,000 at the time, the equivalent of £204,250,000 today!

Victoria Embankment became the first street in Britain to be lit permanently by electric light in 1878, in the form of Yablochkov candles. This was short-lived however, as electricity could not compete with the cheaper gas light, which was re-established in 1884.

Sir John Betjemen once described Embankment tube station as “the most charming of all the Edwardian and neo-Georgian Renaissance stations.” In 1927 a gruesome discovery was made in the cloakroom of Charing Cross station. A trunk containing five severed parts of a woman’s body was found by staff, which was later identified to be the work of John Robinson, a murderer who was later hanged at Pentonville.

Some have complained about how busy the area can get with tourists at peak times, especially along Villiers Street and around the stations. However, as those who work along Villiers Street attest, without the busy tourist crowd the shops would be empty as there are so few locals who live around the neighbourhood.

The area is currently affected by the £4.2 billion Thames Tideway Tunnel project, which is a 25km tunnel under the tidal section of the Thames which will deal with the current overflow of rainwater and sewage that ends up in the river. Victoria Embankment is one of the current construction sites and will make the surrounding roads busier than usual until the construction is finished in 2024. The project has pledged that they will also plant two trees for every one tree felled during construction.