I must walk past this place half a dozen times each week but have only just noticed that it has been tarted up.
Rippon’s Newsagent is on Dean Street nestled between the old Highlander Pub (now the Nellie Dean) and a sandwich bar. It used to have a fading, tatty Georgian shopfront that had a certain decadent charm about it. But no longer. Turns out it was expensively refurbished in 2011 to make it look like it might have done on the day it originally opened. Now it has a rather smart, relatively freshly painted shopfront and I think they have done it very well.
Soho changes by the week, old buildings pulled down or made chi-chi or twee. It might have had a lick of paint but it remains pleasingly higgledy-piggeldy and it belongs to this old street that also boasts the Dean Street townhouse, Blacks and the superb 68 Dean Street, all of which we should be grateful for.
Rippon’s 88 Dean Street
A fine restoration of the original Georgian shopfront