December 2008
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.
- Please choose a street from the below -
Orange Street
Orange Street currently extends from Haymarket to Charing Cross Road but the part to the west of Whitcomb Street was called James St until 1905. Colonel Thomas Panton, the speculator responsible for nearby Panton St and friend of Charles II, probably built it in the 1670’s. A tablet inscribed ‘Iames Street 1673’ is still attached to the building that was erected in 1887 upon the site of a tennis court built by Simon Osbaldeston in about 1634, which is now a garage. Osbaldeston, barber to the Lord Chamberlain, later ran a popular eating house, in conjunction with the tennis court and a bowling green. The tennis court was in fact the Royal Tennis Court of Charles II situated beyond the junction with Whitcomb Street which is why the pub on the corner is called The Hand and Racquet. The Latin motto on the pub sign, ‘Orbes orbem semper spectant’ translates as ‘Keep your eye on the ball’.
The rest of Orange Street was not built until the 1690s, part of it upon the site of the stables of James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, beheaded at the age of 36 after the battle of Sedgemoor in 1685. The stables were sometimes called the Orange Mews in reference to the colour of the Monmouth coat-of-arms and to distinguish them from the nearby Green Mews and Blue Mews. The Duke’s portrait now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery and an interesting story surrounds it. The Duke was taken to Tower Hill for his execution to face the famously unreliable axe of Jack Ketch. His beheading was a particularly bloody affair, as the first blow only made a slight wound. Ketch tried again but his head stayed on. Eventually a knife was needed to complete the decapitation. Monmouth, seen by the crowd as a Protestant martyr, was then taken to the Tower. It was suddenly remarked that no official portrait of him existed and the decision was taken to paint him then and there. The Royal Surgeon had to do his best to stitch him back together, tied a white cravat round his neck and called in the painter. William Wissing had 24 hours to complete the portrait before the sitter ‘went off’. You can still see the picture today in the National Portrait Gallery.
As well as the portrait of the Duke of Monmouth, the National Portrait Gallery running along one side of Orange Street, houses pictures of kings, queens poets, musicians, artists, thinkers from every period since the late 14th century and is a significant landmark. The oldest works on 4th floor include a Holbein cartoon of Henry VIII and paintings of his wives. The Elizabethans section features probably the only surviving portrait of Shakespeare taken from life. Other artists exhibited include Van Dyck, Reynolds, Gainsborough and Sargent.
East of St Martin’s Street, the Orange Street Congregational Church stands upon part of the site of a Huguenot chapel established in 1693. In the 1770s and 1780s when it was briefly a Church of England chapel, the Revd. Augustus Toplady, author of the hymn Rock of Ages was a minister here. The present much smaller chapel was built in 1929. Next to the original church was Sir Isaac Newton’s town house from 1710 to 1727, his last London residence and where the Westminster Reference Library now stands. Later that century it became the home of the musicologist Dr Burney and his daughter Fanny, the diarist and novelist. Orange Street is meant to have been the location of the original shop on which Dickens modelled his Old Curiosity Shop.
AGN Shipleys, a firm of Chartered accountants, business advisers and tax experts was established in the 1890s and is now situated on Orange Street. The firm gained a reputation as accountants and auditors to Covent Garden theatres. In the early days this included such mundane book keeping tasks as counting each evening’s box office takings. The firm has maintained its expertise in the entertainment sector but nowadays works more for film and television production companies and individual artists.
At the entrance to Orange Street is a statue of Sir Henry Irving by Thomas Brock. Beyond it is what looks like a small glassed-in bandstand, actually a converted toilet. In the mid 1990’s this was the entrance to the subterranean office of a newspaper-with-a-difference, the Daily Loonylugs. Brainchild of eccentric millionaire Tony Samuelson, its gimmick was that each issue incorporated a paper hat.
Orange Street has been in the press more recently thanks to supposedly squeaky clean pop band S Club 7. Police caught the three male members of the band smoking cannabis whilst walking down the street and took them for questioning at Charing Cross Police station. They were subsequently released and fined. Proof that Orange Street today is still home to the odd ‘character’ and notorious happening and its history continues. It remains to be seen if someone will be writing about them in 100 years time.
