Holborn: Drury Lane

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Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of Holborn with this look at Drury Lane:

The Coal Yard at the north-east end of Drury Lane, where Nell Gwynne was born, is now Goldsmith Street.

Pit Place, on the west of Great Wild Street, derives its name from the cockpit or theatre, the original of the Drury Lane Theatre, which stood here.

The cockpit was built previous to 1617, for in that year an incensed mob destroyed it, and tore all the dresses.

It was afterwards known as the Phœnix Theatre.

At one time it seems to have been used as a school, though this may very well have been at the same time as it fulfilled its legitimate functions.

Betterton and Kynaston both made their first public appearance here. The actual date of the theatre's demolition is not known.

Parton judges it to have been at the time of the building of Wild, then Weld, Street.

Its performances are described, 1642, as having degenerated into an inferior kind, and having been attended by inferior audiences.

At the north-east end of Drury Lane is the site of the ancient hostelry, the White Hart.

Here also was a stone cross, known as Aldewych Cross, for the lane was anciently the Via de Aldewych, and is one of the oldest roads in the parish; Saxon Ald = old, and Wych = a village, a name to be preserved in the new Crescent.

It is difficult to understand, looking down Drury Lane today from Holborn, that this most mean and unlovely street was once a place of aristocratic resort - of gardens, great houses, and orchards.

Here was Craven House, here was Clare House; here lived the Earl of Stirling, the Marquis of Argyll, and the Earl of Anglesey.

Here lived for a time Nell Gwynne.

Pepys says:

"Saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodgings door in Drury Lane in her smock-sleeves and bodice, looking upon one. She seemed a mighty pretty creature."

The Lane fell into disrepute early in the eighteenth century.

The "saints of Drury Lane," the "drabs of Drury Lane," the starving poets of Drury Lane, are freely ridiculed by the poets of that time.

"'Nine years!' cries he, who high in Drury Lane,
Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane,
Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends,
Obliged by hunger and request of friends."

Next: Holborn: Great Queen Street