east of the precinct wall was more void and garden ground; farther to the east the 'inner court yarde' of the convent. This held tenements backing upon Allen's garden to the north, and others, including a mill-house, backing on the garden ground to the west. In this yard was a well, probably the eponymous 'Holywell', which fed a horsepond by Rutland's stable on the south-east, and then drained away through the debatable ground to the Finsbury ditch.[1] Since Burbadge's barn is known to have been shored up to the Theatre, it is evident that this must have been constructed in the void and garden ground between the tenements and the precinct wall, and as there was no right of way through Rutland's holding from Holywell Lane, an entrance was made through the wall direct from Finsbury fields. The Theatre itself, indeed, was sometimes loosely spoken of as 'in the fields'.[2] Working from later title-deeds of the locality, Mr. Braines has successfully located the precise site of the building in the angle now formed by Curtain Road, which occupies the strip of void ground between the precinct wall and Finsbury ditch, and New Inn Yard, which occupies a strip of the 'debateable ground' and a strip also of the site of the Great Barn. The site is now part of the premises of the Curtain Road Elementary School.[3]
- ↑ The position of the well in Chassereau's Survey of Shoreditch (1745) seems to me to bear out this identification, although, as Braines (1915), 4, points out, we do not know Chassereau's authority. Under Burbadge's lease all Giles Allen's tenants in Holywell were to have access to the well. Stowe, Survey, i. 15, describes the holy well as 'much decayed and marred with filthinesse purposely laide there, for the heighthening of the ground for garden plots'. It is clearly distinct from Dame Agnes a Cleere's well, which was outside Holywell, towards the north (Stowe, Survey, i. 16; ii. 273; Stopes, 192).
- ↑ Tarlton's News out of Purgatory (S. R. 26 June 1590), in Tarlton, 54, 105, 'I would needs to the Theatre to a play, where when I came, I founde such concourse of unrulye people, that I thought it better solitary to walk in the fields, then to intermeddle myselfe amongst such a great presse. Feeding mine humour with this fancie, I stept by dame Anne of Cleeres well, and went by the backside of Hogsdon, where, finding the sun to be hotte, and seeing a faire tree that had a coole shade, I sat me downe to take the aire, where after I had rested me a while, I fell asleepe. . . . And with that I waked, and saw such concourse of people through the fields that I knew the play was doon.'
- ↑ Braines (1915), 27. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 351, put the site on the present Deane's Mews, but this is too far south, and does not allow for the interposition of Rutland's holding between Holywell Lane and Allen's. The shoring up of the barn to the Theatre is testified to in Wallace, 227, 231, 243. The exact site therefore cannot have been far east of the Curtain Road, which apparently occupies the strip of void land held by Burbadge between the old priory wall and the ditch bordering Finsbury fields.
