Street features
Every Covent Garden Street has its own history, some more desirable than others.
Please select street below and meet some of Covent Garden’s characters over the years.
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Uncovering Betterton Street
Top to toe scaffolding masks the facades of many of the buildings on Betterton Street today and builders crowd the pavement whilst on their tea breaks. However, the street has some interesting history lurking behind its seemingly everyday appearance.
Situated between Endell Street and Drury Lane, Betterton Street is home to Brownlow House, a fine eighteenth-century building, pictured above. At one time, both the house and street took their names from Sir James Brownlow, owner of Lennox House in Drury Lane (demolished c.1682). Brownlow Street was re-named Betterton Street in 1877 in honour of the seventeenth-century Shakespearean actor Thomas Betterton who lived and died in nearby Russell Street.
Born in London c1635, Betterton was an actor, theatre manager and adapter of dramas. He joined the acting company that re-opened the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane in 1660 where he made his first appearance, and the following year joined Sir William D’Avenant’s company at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, known as the Duke’s Theatre in its early days. It was converted from an indoor tennis court c1660 and was occupied by the D’Avenant Theatre Company until D’Avenant’s death in 1671 when they moved in to the new and prestigious Dorset Garden Theatre. Betterton then moved to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane when the two companies amalgamated in 1682. At this point the Lincoln’s Inn Theatre was used for tennis again until 1695 when Betterton re-opened it for plays. He was one of four proprietors including William Congreve the playwright, whose play Love for Love was the first production on re-opening, an occasion that was attended by William II. Betterton was a fine actor and shrewd manager and he tailored many of Shakespeare’s plays to suit the audiences of the times. He also wrote plays of his own including The Amorous Widow (1667) and adapted a text for Henry Purcell’s semi opera The Prophetess or The History of Dioclesian (1690). "It’s beyond imagination," whispered Samuel Pepys to his companion whilst watching Betterton’s Hamlet in 1661. "Mr Betterton is the best actor in the world". Many people credit Thomas Betterton with having introduced moving scenery into this country to replace the hanging tapestries that were in common use at that time. Indeed the production of Hamlet mentioned by Samuel Pepys was performed at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre in Portugal Street, which was the first theatre to use movable and changeable scenery on the English stage. He was widely considered to be one of the most outstanding personalities of the Restoration era. His wife, Mary Sanderson who died in 1712, was one of the first English actresses and shared his stage triumphs.
The next century saw marked changes to Betterton Street. It would seem in the 1800s, that the street was little more than one of many blind alleys off Drury Lane that acted as refuge for the numerous gin drinkers in the area. The gin was sold in nearby public houses that, by their frontage, could have been mistaken for the houses of noblemen if it were not a well known fact that the area abounded with poverty and misery. The pubs stood at the corners and crossings of these various streets and it was in the alleyways, such as Betterton Street, that mothers would leave their children to play while they went into the gin palaces to enjoy a farthings-worth of gin. The pubs could be seen from afar and as Harold Clunn says in The Face of London, "they could properly be termed the lighthouses that guided the thirsty soul on the road to ruin. Not only were they resplendent with plate glass and gilt cornices, but each house displayed signs informing you that it sold the only real brandy in London, or that it offered the famous cordial medicated gin strongly recommended by the faculty." Magnificent on the outside, these pubs were dismal and depressing inside and always crowded, often with people raving under the influence of drink. Small tradesmen and mechanics, some of them usurers, occupied the first and second floors of the narrow houses in the area.
Modern day Betterton Street still has a fair number of residential properties and is home to Garden Studios where a number of small businesses and start-ups exist. The Poetry Society is also based here. In 1749 the main entrance to St Paul’s Hospital was to be found on the Street but it moved to Endell Street 100 years later. It is now undergoing major refurbishment by The Hospital Group.
It is part of Thomas Betterton’s legacy that Covent Garden is still the heart of London theatre land and the street named after him continues to be a vibrant part of the local community.
