Rose Street
A comparison of the modern map with those of
Rocque or Horwood (Plates 7, 8) will show how
the original character of Rose Street has been
obscured by changes made in the 1860's. The
construction of Garrick Street deprived the
southern arm of its identity as a street of houses,
which is now apparent only in the drawing of 1851
reproduced on Plate 50b, while the westward
extension of Hart (now Floral) Street broke
across the long narrow alley-like approach to
Long Acre. The circumstances in which this
tortuous and ill-favoured link between that street
and Covent Garden had come into being in 1638–
1640 are described on page 268.
Something of the haste with which at least the
greater part of the street was developed is apparent in the St. Martin's ratebooks, where a score
or more of ratepayers were assessed in 1640 but
none in previous years. In this ratebook the
street is designated Red Rose Street, which was
the name originally given to the southernmost
north-south arm (ref. 185) and to the east-west arm. (ref. 186)
The northern arm was originally called White
Rose Street (ref. 186) and its appearance in the ratebooks
has not been certainly identified, but, if not included in the Red Rose Street section, it cannot
have preceded it by more than a year or two. (ref. 187)
On Lacy's 1673 map (Plate 2) and later maps the
distinction of nomenclature is not observed. (fn. a)
All of the street was laid out beyond the wall
made in c. 1610 to enclose the centre of Covent
Garden (see page 24). The greater part (including virtually all that now surviving) was
built on land already sold off by the fourth Earl of
Bedford in 1635, (ref. 188) and most of this was left in
St. Martin's parish when the boundary of the
chapelry and parish of St. Paul was delimited.
Lacy's map of 1673 shows the east-west arm
extending westward beyond the point where the
northern arm turned off, and subsequent maps
show a connexion here with another alley running
into Long Acre called Angell Alley: this western
extension of Rose Street has now been swallowed
up in Garrick Street.
As originally built, many of the houses in the
street were no doubt, as the Privy Council
judged, 'fitt for mechanicks only and persons of
meane quallitie'. (ref. 189) One poet of note, Samuel
Butler, lived and died in the street in 1680, (ref. 72) but
a better indication of its character is probably the
ambuscade and assault to which Dryden was subjected in December of the previous year, as he
was returning from a coffee house to his residence
in Long Acre. (ref. 190) The period around 1690 saw
some rebuilding, part but not all of it under
building leases from the fifth Earl and controlled
by his requirements for a specified outlay on the
work. (ref. 191) It was probably at this period, in about
1688, that Lazenby Court was made, to give
access to Long Acre and Hart Street via Conduit
Court. (ref. 1)
The early nineteenth-century vestry minutes
of the parish contain some references to brothels in
Rose Street (ref. 192) and the degraded nature of much of
the street is apparent from an article in The
Builder in 1853 on London's cholera-infected
quarters. Rose Street was 'thickly inhabited by a
poor, and in some instances bad class of people'
(some of them cellar-dwellers) and was without
a water supply for forty-eight hours from
Saturday to Monday. (ref. 193) Walford, writing in
1874, recalled the character of the street before
Garrick Street was made: 'here might be seen
low gambling-houses; floors let out to numerous
families with fearful broods of children; sundry
variations of the magisterial permission "to be
drunk on the premises"; strange, chaotic trades,
to which no one skilled contribution imparted a
distinctive character; and, by way of a moral
drawn from the far-off pure air of open fields and
farm-yards, a London dairy, professing to be
constantly supplied with fresh butter, cream and
new milk from the country.' (ref. 194)
(fn. b)
Except for the public house pleasingly visible
from Garrick Street, Rose Street now consists
largely of the side and rear elevations of buildings
in other thoroughfares.
No. 33 Rose Street:
The Lamb and Flag Public
House
The freehold of this site was sold by the fourth
Earl of Bedford in 1635 and very little documentary evidence of its history has survived. The
first building on the site was a brick house erected
by Thomas Constable in 1638–9. (ref. 186) This house
was rebuilt in 1688 (ref. 1) when the passage through
the ground storey (now called Lazenby Court)
was probably made. The carcase of the present
building appears to date from the early eighteenth
century but the brick façade is modern (1958) and
replaces a stucco front of the mid 1840's (Plates
50b, 74d).
The earliest date at which the house is definitely recorded as licensed premises is 1772 when
it was called the Cooper's Arms. The tavern had
probably been transferred there from the west side
of the street, where until 1771 there had been a
Cooper's Arms since the early eighteenth century.
From 1751 to 1771 the licensee of the Cooper's
Arms, George Cook, is shown in the ratebooks as
occupying both sites. (ref. 196) The name was changed
to the Lamb and Flag in 1833. (ref. 10)
Although modern, the simply designed front
has a convincing early ninteenth-century appearance. Three storeys high and two windows
wide, it is built of red brick, the second- and thirdstorey windows having barred sashes recessed in
plain openings with flat arches of gauged brick.
The ground-storey window is flanked by two-leaf
doors, framed by plain pilasters supporting a simple
fascia. The carcase of the building is probably of
early eighteenth-century date. Part of the doglegged staircase survives, and, although partitions
have been removed to make one large room on the
ground and on the first floors, some plain panelling
survives. The back wall is of stock brick with a
stone coping, but parts of the original closet-wing
walls survive, their part-coloured brickwork
matching that of the cellar walls. The framed and
weather-boarded wall, on the west side of the open
passage at ground-storey level, is a picturesque
feature.