Adelaide Street was named for Queen Adelaide, Consort to King William IV.
In William IV’s reign, the "West Strand" inprovements were made between 1830 and 1832. Adelaide Street, though at the centre of these alterations, was laid out before this in 1818 and named after Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen when William was still a prince. The street swept away the Charing Cross slums.
It is the location of Maggi Hambling’s memorial to Oscar Wilde. Unveiled in 1998, it shows Wilde rising from the dead with a bronze head and arm emerging from a low granite sarcophagus. A languid hand waves a lit cigarette, and the words on the poet’s lips may well be those of the inscription: "We are all living in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars."
