
Soho is an neighborhood of Westminster on the West End of London, England. It was developed from farmland by King Henry VIII in 1536, when it became a royal park. Named for a hunting cry, it became a parish in its own right in the late 17th century and becmae an upper-class neighborhood during the 1680s. A cholera outbreak in 1854 led to the aristocracy leaving the area, and, during the 20th century, it became a center of the sex industry, nightlife, and the film industry; London's gay community was centered on Old Compton Street. Since the 1980s, Soho underwent considerable gentrification, and it became a fashionable district of upmarket restaurants and media offices.