South Shoreditch Conservation Area

The history of Shoreditch has been largely dictated by its location outside the City walls of London.  The origin of the name is unknown, but it has a Saxon origin and may come from the “Sewerditch”, a stream, which ran east of St Leonard’s to near Holywell Lane. In the Middle Ages, the Augustinian Priory of St. John the Baptist in Haliwell dominated the eastern area.

The Priory site was split up at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, however several of the remaining courts and yards in Shoreditch are believed to follow the layout of the Priory complex. It is perhaps not widely known that the first two London theatres were built in Shoreditch. The first playhouse, called simply 'The Theatre' of 1576 was on Curtain Road at the junction with New Inn Yard, the first permanent playhouse in Britain.

The Curtain Theatre, on the site of Hewett Street, eventually came under the same management as The Theatre. Centrally theatre was centred round the Globe at Bankside. William Shakespeare came to Shoreditch as an actor and lived in Bishopsgate and possibly in Holywell Street. Industries have existed in Shoreditch since Medieval times much as brick making along Kingsland Road. Others were there because they were not allowed to operate within the City walls, such as tanning.

The South Shoreditch Conservation Area is bounded by Shoreditch High Street. This image shows Victorian and Edwardian commercial buildings, opposite Saint Leonard’s Church.

The Hoxton area, in contrast to Shoreditch, was laid out by this same period to a more formal street pattern. Hoxton Square was laid out shortly after 1683. Pitfield Street existed by name. Hoxton Market was simply called the Market Place. Hoxton and Charles Squares, were the most fashionable residential areas, Shoreditch included. One of the earliest Academies (of 1669) was in Hoxton Square.

The squares were centres of illegal non-conformist sects. South Shoreditch was the centre of the London furniture trade in the Victorian period. The opening of the Regents Canal in 1820 made timber transportation cheaper and easier. South Shoreditch and Hoxton were near enough to trade with the City yet far enough from it to keep lower rents. By 1861 about 30 per cent of all London furniture makers worked in the East End. Many of the areas surviving warehouses and showroom buildings are associated with the furniture trade.

An historical view of Curtain Road, one of the major thoroughfares in the South Shoreditch Conservation Area

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Page updated: 28 Feb 2007