Drury Lane is a street on the boundary between the Covent Garden and Holborn areas of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster. Drury Lane is part of London's West End Theatreland.
Notable landmarks
The street originated as an early medieval lane referred to in Latin as the
Via de Aldwych, which probably connected St. Giles Leper Hospital with the fields of Aldwych Close, owned by the hospital but traditionally said to have been granted to the Danes as part of a peace treaty with King Alfred the Great in Saxon times. It acquired its name from the
Suffolk barrister Sir Robert Drury, who built a mansion called
Drury House on the lane around 1500. After the death in 1615 of his great-great-grandson, another Robert Drury, the property passed out of the family. It became the London house of the Earl of Craven, then a
public house under the sign of his reputed mistress, the Queen of Bohemia. Subsequently, the gardens and courtyards of the house were built over with rows of small houses. The remains of the house itself, which had been progressively demolished, were finally cleared in 1809. By this time, Drury Lane had become one of the worst slums in London, dominated by prostitution
[Sir Richard Steele in The Tatler (No. 46) gives a picture of Drury Lane as a district divided into particular "," analogous to "" in other places, "over which matrons of known ability preside."] and
. The area was eventually cleared to make way for the developments of Kingsway and
Aldwych.
The Muffin Man resided on Drury Lane, according to the famous nursery rhyme.[I. Opie and P. Opie, The Singing Game (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 379–82.]
The term "Drury Lane" is often used to refer to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which has in different incarnations been located in the street since the 17th century, even though today the main entrance is on Catherine Street. Also in Drury Lane is the Gillian Lynne Theatre.[ Covent Garden and Holborn Young Trails - Camden Council, 2006 (booklet)]
See also
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