Wardour Street is a street in Soho, London. It is a one-way street south to north from Leicester Square, up through Chinatown, across Shaftesbury Avenue to Oxford Street.

It is named after Sir Archibald Wardour, who was the architect of several buildings on the street. There has been a thoroughfare here on maps and plans since they were first printed, the earliest being Elizabethan.

In 1585, to settle a legal dispute, a plan of what is now the West End was prepared. The dispute was about a field roughly where Broadwick Street is today. The plan was very accurate and clearly gives the name Colmanhedge Lane to this major route across the fields described as “The Waye from Vxbridge to London” (Oxford St) to what is now Cockspur St. The old plan shows that this lane follows the modern road almost exactly, including bends at Brewer and Old Compton Streets.

The road is also a major thoroughfare on Faithorne and Newcourt’s map surveyed between 1643 and 1647. Although they do not give a name, it has about 24 houses and a large “Gaming House” roughly on the site of the Odeon cinema on the north west corner of Leicester Square. The map also shows a large windmill, 40-50 yards to the west of what is now the Church of St Anne, roughly on the current position of Great Windmill Street.