Wych Street
Wych Street was in
Kingsway.[1]
History
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The area around Drury Lane was not affected by the
Inn of Chancery where Sir Thomas More received his early legal education, and, to the south, Lyon's Inn, another Inn of Chancery where Sir Edward Coke was a reader in 1578,[2] which was replaced by a Globe Theatre and the Opera Comique c. 1863.[2] The Shakespeare's Head was the meeting place of the Club of Owls, named because of the late hours kept by its members.[3] Mark Lemon, editor of Punch, lived there for a year[3] and "a club of literati used to meet on the first floor".[3]
In Literary Anecdotes
Thomas Evans of the Strand and Thomas Davies.[4]
South of the western end was
James I. This building was demolished – replaced by the first Olympic Theatre.[2]
The artist Louise Rayner 1832-1924 painted the corner of Wych Street showing Symond's Coffee House circa 1880.
Jack Sheppard, the infamous thief, was apprenticed to a carpenter, Mr. Wood, on this street; one of his haunts, the White Lion tavern, was here. The music hall performer Arthur Lloyd lived at № 39 in 1892.[2]
Around 1780, the brothers George and John Jacob Astor, who became America's first multimillionaire, ran an instrument store in № 26.[2]
In popular culture
Where Was Wych Street? is one of the best loved short stories by Stacy Aumonier (1877–1928).
In Patrick O'Brian's novel Post Captain (1972), the character Dr. Stephen Maturin is in London in late September 1804, reporting to the Admiralty in his capacity as a naval intelligence agent. Having left the Admiralty building on Whitehall, he intends to "wander[] among the bookstalls of Wych Street," but because of the rain he decides instead to return to his inn.[5]
See also
References
- ^ National Library of Scotland - basic tool - instantly compare with slider function old and open source maps
- ^ OCLC 28963301.
- ^ a b c Larwood, Jacob; Hotten, John Camden The History of Signboards from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, London: John Camden Hotten, 1866, p 66-7
- ^ a b Nichols, John, Literary anecdotes of the eighteenth century, volume 5, 1812, p325
- ^ Post Captain, Patrick O'Brian; 1972; Chapter 14
External links
- Where Was Wych Street? by Stacy Aumonier at Project Gutenberg.
- British Library:
- Original watercolour of Wych Street, London, 1860 [from the author's presentation copy of The Life of Dickens, 1872-74]
- Old Houses In Wych Street, 1876 Photographer: A. & J. Bool, Printer: Henry Dixon
- Old Houses In Wych Street, 1876 Photographer: A. & J. Bool, Printer: Henry Dixon
- Wych Street, London, 1901
- "The Strand (northern tributaries): Clement's Inn, New Inn, Lyon's Inn etc.", Old and New London: Volume 3 (1878), pp. 32–5.
- Map