APPENDIX II
Designs for an intended New Street linking Coventry Street with
King Street, Covent Garden
It is generally agreed that most of the Metropolitan Improvements carried out during the
nineteenth century were inspired or anticipated
by John Gwynn in his London and Westminster
Improved, published in 1766. In this brilliant and
prophetic essay, Gwynn describes an intended
street linking Coventry Street with King Street,
Covent Garden. 'From the opening at the northeast corner of Leicester-fields before-mentioned,
a street of fifty feet in breadth, making an acute
angle with Long-Acre, is carried through St.
Martin's-Court, crossing St. Martin's-Lane into
New-Street, which is kept of the same breadth to
the end of King-Street. It may not be improper
to observe, that a carriage from Coventry-Street
before it comes into Long-Acre, makes six
right-angles, and from the same place into
Covent-Garden, no less than eight, which,
exclusive of the length of the way, is on account
of the hazard and difficulty in making short
turnings very dangerous in the night.' Although
this street never materialized, it was probably the
first of Gwynn's proposals to form the basis for a
scheme of redevelopment.
In the British Museum is a bound-up set of
drawings (Add. MS. 8851) (fn. a) giving elevations
along the north side of Leicester Square and the
projected new street of fifty feet width, together
with plans of the oblong block of houses on the
south side, between St. Martin's Lane and a new
street leading north into Long Acre (Plate 54).
The drawings are undated and unsigned, but the
elevations are remarkably similar in style to those
of Salisbury Street, Strand, built c. 1765–9 to
designs by James Paine, who leased the ground
from the Earl of Salisbury. The suggestion that
Paine was responsible for the scheme under
review is strengthened by the following facts.
Until 1766 he lived in St. Martin's Lane, having
his friend John Gwynn as tenant and neighbour
in Little Court. Much of the land required for
building the new street belonged to the Earl of
Salisbury.
The house fronts, generally three windows wide
and four storeys high without garrets, are arranged
in formal Palladian astylar compositions, the long
terraces of plain-fronted houses having wide
central features and narrow end pavilions, all
crowned with pediments, while the short ranges
have end pavilions only. Shop fronts are provided
in the short Coventry Street extension and in the
rebuilt Bear Street. Features shared in common
with Salisbury Street are the superimposed
Venetian, three-light, and lunette windows of the
end pavilions in the Bear Street terrace and the
Coventry Street extension.
The only plans given are for the houses in the
oblong block on the south side, nearest to King
Street. The plots are mostly 20 feet wide, the
houses being 48 feet deep and planned with a
top-lit staircase compartment between the front
room and the back, the rooms being linked by a
closet behind the staircase. The back room is the
larger of the two, having a splay-sided bay with
three windows overlooking the small yard. This
contains an out-house in one corner and a twinseat privy in the other. There are seventeen
houses fronting the new street, but the arrangement is varied in the south-west angle of the block
where there are two large and wide-fronted
houses having three rooms to a floor. The larger
of these houses, fronting to St. Martin's Lane,
has an octagonal room on one side of its D-ended
staircase, and it appears to have been intended for
a special occupant, perhaps the architect of the
scheme.