Clayhouse yard, ?White Cross street.

[[Ray]]

Hi

Not that you can see much now...

Google streetview for whitecross street.

(Using the 1850.com or 1868.com) "Shrewsbury" is still there (in name)

I reckon that geographically "PlayhouseYd" is "now" Fortune.
(it's easy to think that the shape of the alley behind the shops and the block of flats "mirror" the layout of playhouseyd)

The main thing is that GoldenLane is "still there" and it shows how small PlayhouseYd would have been.

I read on one census enumerators return that the area was "thickly populated".

 
Ray

[[Ray]]

Keyboard86

Talking of HattonGarden..............
the OldMitre pub in ElyCt ........best unspoilt pub in London.

Ray

[keyboard86]

Keyboard86

Talking of HattonGarden..............
the OldMitre pub in ElyCt ........best unspoilt pub in London.

Ray

Hi Ray, The Mitre is actually in Ely Place, the alleyway that leads to Ely Court from Hatton Garden, great pint of Bass!!

Keyboard86

[Eilleen]

keyboard86 and Croxleygreen,

Thank you both for you help, 

London is like a different continent to me,    but I'm interested.

I come from Lincolnshire , lots of little places , rather that thousands of little streets .

Eilleen.

[[Ray]]

Eilleen

(Valda, Dawnsh, Sorry about the off-topic bit)
 http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Old_Mitre%2C_EC1N_6SJ

Visit this place if ever you are near.
(Don't forget, some London City pubs don't open at weekends)

Seems most sites' addresses place it in both ElyPlace AND ElyCourt.
KB86 you walk from HattonG n I'll walk from ElyCt, see you there in ElyPlace?

Ray

[Valda]

Hi


'8-16 Fortune Street (formerly Playhouse Yard) and 13 Shrewsbury Court. Includes The Refuge for the Destitute off Whitecross Street: formerly part of the property of the Prebend of Finsbury  LCC/CL/GEN/08/C/76/243-249  1769-1921'

'At the end of Fann Street to the left lies Fortune Street (once called Playhouse Yard), leading into White Cross Street, where in late November 1600 Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn the actor (1566-1626) opened the Fortune Theatre '


'The geography of the asylum for the houseless is somewhat difficult to make out to those whose knowledge of London extends no [-10-] farther eastwards than the Royal Italian Opera House, or even Exeter Hall.
    There are some streets that even the most experienced cabmen have to descend from their box half a dozen times, in order to ferret out the road to; and Playhouse-yard-the locality of the refuge-is one of these.
    The way lies up a long, narrow street, rendered still narrower by a double flank of stalls trestled along the kerb. At the corner of every turning hereabouts is a gin-palace, with a monster lamp suspended over the entrance, and a long, shell-fish stall in front of the door, set out with a trefoil arrangement of pen'orths of oysters, as big as muffins. Outside the bakers' shop-windows are stuck large bills, always announcing the grateful intelligence that bread is "DOWN AGAIN TO EVEN MONEY ;" and at the tea-dealers' there are comic placards, designed and coloured by ticket-writers, setting forth either the advantages of joining their "pudding club," or the dangerous strength of their "gunpowder tea." Pawnbrokers, too, abound in the neighbourhood; and at their door hang blankets and patchwork counterpanes, suspended from one corner, as in auction-rooms, while the watches, ranged in the windows, are as big and thick as the bull's. eye to a dark lantern. Nor is there any lack of coal and potato sheds; and at these the current price of fuel is always quoted in chalk on a board at so much "per cwt." Here, too, on every Sunday in the summer season, the light spring-van, which at other times is used for enabling the neighbours to indulge in that exciting lunatic sport known as "shooting the moon," puts on curtains, and starts with a party of pleasure and a beer barrel for Hampton Court.

    The yard christened Playhouse is a lane that it is ridiculous to dream of entering in a cab. Accordingly, two or three street-stalls have to be disarranged, in order to allow your vehicle standing-room, and never was such commotion among the coster trucks and apple. stalls as when your Hansom endeavours to draw up to the kerb. As you turn the corner, you enter even a poorer district than before. Here pawnbrokers will not flourish, and "dolly-shops" are found to prevail instead, where even the pledges which have been refused by the "cruel uncle" are not rejected by those ebony "babes in the wood that" swing over the door as signs of the Black Doll. The baker's shop, the grocer's, and the coal warehouse have severally disappeared, and been rolled into one omnium-gatherum store in "the general line."
    The old Fortune Theatre stood in this same Playhouse-yard some two centuries and .a half ago, and never was more pathetic drama performed there, under the auspices of the blind goddess, than that which is nightly represented at the asylum for the houseless; for, rightly viewed, the scenes and changes enacted there are but a portion of the treat play of fortune, and the ragged crowd within the walls but the wretched mummers to whom Fate has east the sorriest parts.
    It is impossible to mistake the asylum if you go there at dark, just as the lamp in the wire cage over the entrance-door is being lighted; for this is the hour for opening, and. ranged along the kerb is a kind [-11-] of ragged regiment, drawn up four deep, and stretching far up and down the narrow lane, until the crowd is like a hedge to the roadway.'

Further description of the refuge here

http://www.victorianlondon.org/mayhew/paved-romancepreceeding.htm


Regards

Valda

[Eilleen]

Valda,  thank you so much for all your help.

really interesting reading.

Eilleen.