3-028-558 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Old London: Wych-Street, 1870. '"Old London"...is fast disappearing from the face of the earth. The destruction of rickety and dirty old houses, not fit for dwellings, in this parish of St. Clement Danes, for the site of the proposed New Law Courts, has been frequently the theme of our comments..Wych-street and Drury-lane, and the wretched maze of Clare-market, will sooner or later give place to more decent and convenient thoroughfares. If Mr. Peabody's trustees would buy up and pull down half the wretched habitations of this neighbourhood and erect several large blocks of model dwellings in their stead, every Londoner would be much obliged...It formed originally part of the ancient Way of Aldwych...the prosperity of Wych-street was no doubt increased by...the construction of Drury House...which brought the Drury-lane neighbourhood into fashion. But it declined rapidly after the Revolution; and, in the reign of George II., Wych-street was full of second-hand furniture shops, and the byways and courts thereabout were places of evil resort. That agile and audacious young robber, housebreaker, and gaol-breaker, the too-celebrated Jack Sheppard, was born and apprenticed here; and here was the White Lion tavern, where he learnt his wicked tricks'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.