Holborn and Bloomsbury | Page 8

in a search for imaginary treasure.
It was set up again in 1822 on Weybridge Green as a memorial to the
Duchess of York, who died 1820. The dial was not replaced, and was
used as a stepping-stone at the Ship Inn at Weybridge; it still lies on
one side of the Green. The streets of Seven Dials attained a very
unenviable reputation, and were the haunt of all that was vicious and
bad. Terrible accounts of the overcrowding and consequent immorality
come down to us from the newspaper echoes of the earlier part of the
nineteenth century. The opening up of the new thoroughfares of New
Oxford Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Charing Cross Road, have
done much, but the neighbourhood is still a slum. The seven streets
remain in their starlike shape, by name Great and Little White Lion
Street, Great and Little St. Andrew Street, Great and Little Earl Street,
and Queen Street.
Short's Gardens was in 1623 really a garden, and a little later than that
date was acquired by a man named Dudley Short.
Betterton Street was until comparatively recently called Brownlow,
from Sir John Brownlow of Belton, who had a house here in Charles
II.'s time. The street is now, to use a favourite expression of Stow's,
"better built than inhabited," for the row of brick houses of no very
squalid type are inhabited by the very poor.
Endell Street was built in 1844, at the time of the erection of the
workhouse. In it are the National Schools, a Protestant Swiss chapel,
and an entrance to the public baths and wash-houses, to the south of
which rise the towers of the workhouse. Christ Church is hemmed in by
the workhouse, having an outlet only on the street. The church was
consecrated in 1845. In Short's Gardens is the Lying-in Hospital, the
oldest institution of the kind in England. On the west side, between
Castle Street and Short's Gardens, the remains of an ancient bath were
discovered at what was once No. 3, Belton Street, now 23 and 25,
Endell Street. Tradition wildly asserts that this was used by Queen
Anne. Fragments of it still remain in the room used for iron lumber, for
the premises are in the occupation of an iron merchant, but the water
has long since ceased to flow.

Drury Lane has been in great part described in The Strand, which see, p.
97. The Coal Yard at the north-east end, 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 Phoenix 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 to-day 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."

The boundary of St. Giles's parish runs down Drury Lane between
Long Acre and Great Queen Street. Of the last of these