In 1601 most Shoreditch people lived on or near Holywell Street
- the modern Shoreditch High Street, which led north to the
medieval church of St Leonard at the north west end. Here the
High Street met the Old Street and to the north ran Kingsland
Road, both having their origins in Roman times. There were grand
houses, like the 15th century Copt Hall, on the east side of
Kingsland Road, but the clay soil in the field between Kingsland
Road and Hackney Road were being used to make bricks in 1602
and a mere twelve years later, Shoreditch saw its first brick
terrace - Ratcliffe or Rotten Row - built nearby.
Ralph Agas’ map of London of about 1570 gives a glimpse
of Elizabethan Shoreditch. Cottages and two storey timber framed
buildings line Holywell Street, with gardens and fields beyond,
with the spire of St Leonard’s Church rising at the top
of the street. To the east, Hog Lane (later Worship Street)
runs past fields and market gardens to Finsbury.
St Leonards Church had lost its medieval images of the saints
and the Virgin Mary at the Reformation and the chantry chapel
founded by the Elrington family in 1482 no longer echoed to
the sounds of prayers for the founders salvation, but the morning
sun still shone through the Elrington coat-of-arms in glass
and the figure of St George in the church’s east window.
The growing population had also seen new wooden galleries added
to seat more parishioners, merchants, rich and poor - and acting
folk.
Shoreditch's other great church had all but vanished by 1601.
Holywell Priory, founded between 1133 and 1150, stood north
of the present Holywell Lane. It was dissolved in October 1539,
and the church survived just long enough to be sketched by Wyngaerd
in the following year, but then the buildings were swiftly cleared
away.
Richard Burbage
But the precinct survived and in 1576 part of the former priory,
including the Great Barn which was leased to ambitious head
of the Earl of Leicester’s acting company, Richard Burbage,
who was then living in a house on Holywell Street. On a site
near the junction of the present Curtain Road and New Inn Yard,
and conveniently outside the control of the City of London (who
had just banned all play acting), Burbage built the Theatre.
This wooden octagonal building was to see 22 years service and
it was only in 1597, when the landlord refused to renew the
lease, that Burbage’s son Cuthbert was forced to decamp.
But he took the materials from the Theatre with him, and the
wood was re-used to build the Globe on Bankside.
The Theatre had a local rival. The Curtain - the name probably
comes from the old priory walls - was built in 1578 on a site
near the modern Hewett Street. It was smaller than the Theatre
and may have been less successful, for in 1585 Richard Burbage
took on the running of it in addition to the Theatre.
A variety of companies played at the Theatre from 1590, among
whom were the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, who included Richard
Burbage, William Kemp and a player with some talent for writing
as well as acting in plays - William Shakespeare. In the 1590s,
Shakespeare lived in a house in nearby Bishopsgate and some
of his plays were first performed in Shoreditch, including Romeo
and Juliet. Richard Burbage was buried in St Leonard’s
Church, the last home to many a thespian, including Henry VIII’s
jester Will Somers (d.1569), and it was to become the actors’
church.
Hoxton - Medieaval Village
St John's House
North of Old Street lay Hoxton. The medieval village settlement
had been at the north end of the road, but in the 16th century
there was building further south, as courtiers and foreign ambassadors
vied with each other to build houses to catch the country airs
conveniently close to London and Westminster. In 1568, the Portuguese
ambassador had a house on Hoxton Street and opened up his private
chapel so that English Catholics could join in the Mass - forbidden
in local parish churches. The breach in the law brought out
the parish constables, but the ambassador and his guests drew
their swords on the representatives of the law, who beat a hasty
retreat, pursued by taunts of “vilains, dogges and such
like”.
Worried by the growth of London, Elizabeth I had issued a proclamation
against the building of new houses within three miles of the
City of London, but no one took any notice and by 1601 there
were over twenty houses along Hoxton Street. Some were known
by their hanging signs - the Golden Bull and the Red Lyon -
and not all of these would have been taverns! Some of those
who had done well at court came to live in Hoxton. Jerome Bassano’s
father, said to be descended from a family of Italian Jews,
had come from Venice to be a musician at the court of Henry
VIII. Jerome both played and composed and used his accumulated
wealth to buy a house in Hoxton street around 1589. In 1598
this house, on the west side of the street- where the notorious
slum Wilmer Gardens was later built- was broken into by thieves
and 100 in gold jewellery and money stolen - some indication
of the wealth of Hoxtons 16th century elite! One of Jerome’s
female relatives has been put forward as a candidate for Shakespeare’s
Dark Lady - perhaps first glimpsed by the dramatist on the way
to the Hoxton house.
Other large houses included a moated manor house on the site
of St Ann’s Church, which burned down in 1652. When rebuilt,
it had thirteen hearths and a separate banqueting house in the
garden. A later owner, Charles Pitfield may have given his name
to Pitfield Street. A smaller house, on a site near the present
Hoxton House, was sold in 1618. The lucky purchaser had four
rooms on the ground floor, entered through an old porch and
“ fower chambers and a garrett and three studyes or closetes
in the said roomes” above. The 18' x 9' front yard had
its own water pump, and at the back was a 156' long garden with
its own summer house.
One of Hoxton’s fashionable houses was soon to be the
scene of national drama. The house owned by the Haryong family
(on the site of modern Myrtle Walk) was home to Sir Thomas Tresham
in the 1580s. Tresham, a Catholic, was imprisoned in the Fleet
Prison in 1581 for harbouring the Jesuit priest Edmund Campion.
On release he was kept under house arrest at another Hoxton
house, complaining that he was “badly lodged ... his chamber
being alloted over a noisesome kitchen, rudely and disjoinnedly
boarded and not a whit ceiled”. Tresham’s own house
passed to his son-in-law, Lord Monteagle, and it was here on
26 October 1605 that Monteagle received the anonymous letter
giving him advanced warning of a conspiracy to blow up the Houses
of Parliament - the Gunpowder Plot.
Archers shown on part of Agas' Map
North and west of Hoxton lay open or common fields, which like
Finsbury Fields just outside the City walls, was used for archery
practice - still thought vital as a form of civil defence. Hoxton
Fields were also used to settle quarrels. The dramatist Ben
Jonson went there on 22 September 1598 to fight a duel with
Gabriel Spencer, whom he killed and in the ensuing trial was
only able to escape hanging by pleading benefit of clergy -
proving that he was able to write.
After exercise - and sometimes fighting - there was always
the tavern. One of the most famous was extolled in a poem printed
in 1609. Pimlyco, or Runne Redcap, ‘tis a mad world at
Hogsdon celebrates Pimlico Gardens, which lay on the west side
of the present Pitfield Street, more or less due east of the
present St John’s Church. The name probably comes from
a kind of ale.
Shoreditch’s combination of countryside close to the
City of London was to make it popular with benefactors wishing
to make provision for the care of the poor and as the 17th century
progressed, a number of wealthy City merchants left money in
their will to establish almshouses. The first of these arose
from a bequest made by John Fuller, a judge and sometime Treasurer
of the Inner Temple, in his will of 1592. Fuller set aside funds
to build an almshouse for 12 women in Shoreditch and his widow
acquired land on the south side of Old Street. The almshouses
were completed in 1605. Fullers Hospital moved to Wood Green
in 1867 and the site is now part of Shoreditch Town Hall.