Curtain Road

Above: Looking north in Curtain Road. Old Street is seen running across the end of the view.

Let’s make one thing clear from the very beginning. Although the very first purpose-built theatre was erected beside a thoroughfare which has become known as Curtain Road, the road was not named after the curtain in front of a stage in a theatre. This needs to be said because too many people fall into the trap of assuming that is the derivation. Now read on.

Curtain Road lies on an ancient boundary and, because of that fact, it has a most unusual history which has become even more interesting in recent years – due to new archaeological digs.

You may need a street map to help you find your way around the streets which are about to be mentioned. Curtain Road runs almost parallel to Shoreditch High Street. Between those two thoroughfares was once a religious house called the Priory of St John the Baptist – also known as Holywell Priory. The priory land formed a rectangle between the two roads, bounded on the south by Holywell Lane and on the north side by Bateman’s Row. The large priory gateway was on the side of the priory land – in Holywell Lane. The whole area today is unrecognisable as having once been a priory. Nothing on the site remains from those days and there is not even any trace of the priory church.

At a much later date, Great Eastern Street was cut across the SW corner of the priory land making it even harder to understand the layout in medieval times. It should be pointed out that most priories occupied land that was extra-parochial. That is to say that while most of Shoreditch was within a parish – in this case, the parish of St Leonard – priory land was not part of the parish and did not come under parish law. It was rather like a ‘black hole’ in the parish map.

The late 1500s were the years of the formation of theatre companies. Some companies toured England and performed in temporary premises. Other were starting to set up permanent theatre buildings. They were based on the design copied from ancient inns. Many players performed in the courtyards of inns which were surrounded by galleries, where the paying public would stand to gain a better view of the performers. It is no coincidence that theatre seats still have a ‘gallery’ section in them to this day.

Just as theatres were about to be established, a ban was brought into force by the City, preventing any theatre building from being erected within its jurisdiction. It is fairly obvious that the best place to build a theatre would be near where people live, in order to attract large audiences. James Burbage was a famous actor-manager who happened to live in Shoreditch. Because he could not erect a theatre within the City, he decided to build what became London’s first theatre near his home. The site chosen was on the east side of Curtain Road and the theatre opened in 1576. Called simply ‘The Theatre’, it is considered to be the first theatre built in London for the sole purpose of theatrical productions. The site was on part of what had been priory land and, therefore, there were no restrictions as to what could be built there.

So why was Curtain Road so called? It was on the line of what had been part of the curtain wall around the old Holywell Priory. In August 2008 archaeologists from the Museum of London were excavating in a street near Curtain Road called ‘New Inn Broadway’ and they discovered the foundation of a polygonal structure they believed to be the remains of the north-eastern corner of The Theatre. The site is to be used to build a new theatre for the Tower Theatre Company. The Theatre and Shakespeare’s involvement with it are commemorated by two plaques on 86–90 Curtain Road – the building at the corner with New Inn Yard currently occupied by offices. A surviving fragment of the original wall will be retained in the new theatre building.

Today, the northern part of Curtain Road is a busy one-way thoroughfare, linking Great Eastern Street to Old Street. The southern part of Curtain Road is more of a ‘backwater’ which has some really quiet streets running off it. In 2012, archaeologists from Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) announced that they had discovered the remains of a second theatre during trial excavations. This was the Curtain Theatre, a second Elizabethan playhouse situated in Hewett Street, about 200 years south of The Theatre. The Curtain Theatre opened in 1577. In May 2016, excavators revealed that the Curtain Theatre was rectangular in shape, rather than round or polygonal – as was more usual for many of the early theatres, particularly those erected on Bankside.

Sadly, the whole of the area through which Curtain Road runs is dominated by heavy traffic, large old Victorian warehouses and even more overbearing modern blocks of offices and apartments. It is a grim part of London, so uninviting that you may never have walked around the streets. Nevertheless, Curtain Road has quite a story to tell. Of recent years the land has been crossed by a rather grim modern railway viaduct on concrete pillars, providing a new route for the London Overground between Shoreditch High Street Station and Hoxton Station.

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