The Drury Lane Theatre has many interesting associations. It was built by Killigrew in 1663, and was called the King's House, under which title Pepys recalls many visits to it. In 1671 it was burnt down. It was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, and opened 1674. Among the list of patentees we have the names of Rich, Steele, Doggett, Wilks, Cibber, Booth, and also Garrick, who began here his Shakespearian revivals. Sheridan succeeded Garrick as part proprietor, and in 1788 John Kemble became manager. The old theatre was demolished in 1791, and a new one opened three years after. This was also burned down in 1809, and the present theatre opened three years later. J. T. Smith takes the origin of the theatre still further back, saying that even from the time of Shakespeare there had been a theatre here, which had been a cockpit. The site of the cockpit, however, is on the other side of Drury Lane, where Pit Place now is.
North of the theatre was a disused burial-ground, later asphalted and turned into a public playground. It was less than a quarter of an acre in extent. It is now built over by workmen's dwellings of the usual kind. It was an additional burial-ground to St. Mary's le Strand, and is mentioned by Dickens in "Bleak House."
Crown Court recalls the Crown Tavern where Punch was first projected. The south end of Drury Lane, running into Wych Street, is now completely altered. New Inn and Booksellers' Row, otherwise Holywell Street, are wiped off the map, and the semicircular arm of the great new street connecting Holborn and the Strand will come out near St. Clement's Church. The name Holywell referred to a holy well which stood on the spot. There were, apparently, several of these wells in the vicinity; one was on the site of the Law Courts (Times, May 1, 1874). The street was a survival of old London, with its houses picturesquely old, with pointed gables, and it is a cause for regret that it had to go down in the march of modern improvements (see [frontispiece]).
Butcher Row ran round the north side of the church. It was so named from a flesh-market established here by Edward I. Numerous small courts opened off in the north side. Among these were Hemlock, Swan, Chair, Crown and Star Courts. The Row and its vicinity had for many years a notoriously bad reputation. One of the courts off Little Shear Alley was Boswell Court, not, as some have imagined, called after Johnson's biographer. This court was at one time a very fashionable place of residence; Lady Raleigh, the widow of Sir Walter, lived here for three years.
In Butcher Row the houses were picturesque, of timber and plaster. In one of them the great de Rosny, afterwards Duc de Sully, lodged for one night when he came to England as the French Ambassador.
Turning westward, we see what is left of Newcastle Street, which was named after John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, who owned the ground (1711). The work of demolition is going on as far as Catherine Street, where the Gaiety theatre still stands, though not for long, for the second great scimitar sweep of the new street will join the Strand here.
The parish of St. Paul's lies like a leaf on the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, by which it is wholly surrounded. Its southern boundary runs most erratically, zigzagging in and out across the streets which connect Maiden Lane and Henrietta Street with the Strand. The eastern line keeps on the east side of Bow and Brydges Street. The north passes along the north side of Hart Street, and the west cuts across the east ends of Garrick and New Streets, keeping to the east of Bedfordbury.
The name Covent is a corruption of Convent, and is taken from the convent garden of the Abbey of Westminster, which was formerly on this site. It was written Covent, as taken from the French couvent more immediately than the Latin conventus.
At the dissolution of the monasteries, Westminster Convent Garden became Crown property. In the first year of his reign Edward VI. granted it to the Duke of Somerset. On the fall of that nobleman it reverted to the Crown, and in 1552 was granted to the Earl of Bedford with "seven acres, called Long Acre." The Earl of Bedford built a town-house on his newly acquired property, and devoted himself to the improvement of the neighbourhood.
Though the parish is so small, it is full of interesting associations, chiefly of the last two centuries. Wits, actors, literary men, and artists, frequented its taverns and swarmed in its precincts. The contrast between its earlier days, when it was a quiet retreat where the monks slowly paced beneath the sheltering trees, and its later vicissitudes, when the eighteenth-century roisterers and gamesters made merry within its taverns, could hardly be more striking.