PLACE NAME
Major Henry Foubert (died 1743), being the alley beside Major Henry Foubert’s fashionable 18thCentury riding school. The Fouberts were French Huguenots who came to England in 1679 after religious discrimination had forced them to close their riding academy in Paris. Henry’s father Solomon made a living teaching riding and fencing in Soho Fields. Henry succeeded him in 1696 and opened the school in Kingly Street, then called King Street, which was run by members of the family until it was closed down in 1778. The passage, at first called Major Foubert’s Passage, was extended in 1882 along the former Tyler Street, Tyler Court and the east-west arm of Marshall Street to make the present Foubert’s Place.
