* 
“y 
a 
: 
BLACKFRIARS THEATRE BUILDING ; 26 
through narrow, crooked lanes or little streets or foot-ways down 
the hill to the elevated railway, thence alongside of it down Water 
Lane southward to Playhouse Yard. Or if you are at Ludgate 
circus at the foot of Fleet street, cross New Bridge street diag- 
onally to the right. Then at the right of the railway station go 
_up Union street, one street south of the line of the old north wall 
of the Friars, up to Water Lane, thence southward as before. 
But unless your admiration for things ancient in city construc- 
tion and for unfrequented aimless little crevasselike streets is 
strong, you may hesitate to venture alone the whole of either of 
these shorter general routes. 
You may, however, take a more frequented way. Suppose you 
come down Fleet street. When at the bottom you reach Ludgate 
circus, turn to the right down New Bridge street. Then just be- 
fore reaching Blackfriars Bridge on the Thames, turn left into 
Queen Victoria street. A few steps take you to Water Lane, 
along which runs the elevated Southeastern and Chatham Rail- 
way. Go north on Water Lane up the hill seventy-five paces, 
and you reach at your right “Playhouse Yard,’—the name given 
to the little passage in memory of Blackfriars theatre. This is 
not a “yard” or a court, but a narrow, irregular way used by 
foot-passengers. With a width varying to 30 feet, it runs east 
go feet butt against a building which occupies probably the site 
of the old Pipe Office, adjoining the entrance to the “Publishing 
Office” of The Times,—approximately the place of the north 
entrance to the Blackfriars theatre. Here the passage jogs left 
into a wide unsanitary corner pocket, then narrows off in its 
original direction to about 12 feet for a distance of go feet far- 
ther, where it again jogs off left and becomes Glasshouse Yard,— 
so named from the glass-factory that used to stand here near the 
theatre.t It is an observation made by foreign visitors to Lon- 
don and confirmed by maps since the beginning of its history, 
that a given street undergoes a change of name for every im- 
*“Like the Glass-house Furnace 
in Blacke-friers, the bonefires that 
are kept there [in Hell], neuer goe 
out.”—Thos. Dekker, Newes from 
Hell (1606), Non-dramatic Works 
(ed. Grosart, Huth Library), II, 97. 
In the deed of a messuage or 
dwelling adjoining Blackfriars the- 
atre, given by Sir George Moore 
to Cuthbert and Richard Burbage 
26 June, 1601, a passage or way 
from it is mentioned, “which lead- 
eth towards the glassehouse nowe 
in the tenure of Sir Jerom Bowes, 
139 
