Curtain Road began in the shadow of Holywell Priory. The Walbrook River flowed as a small ditch on its western edge.
Holywell Priory had been an important religious location in Shoreditch. Established in the 12th century, the Priory fell victim to the dissolution of the monasteries during 1539.
The priory’s land remained an area of importance in Shoreditch for the following decades. A builder and part-time actor James Burbage lived in a house that connected to the priory’s former brewhouse near to a walled garden called ’The Curtain’. That name derived from the curtain wall of the adjacent priory.
Dramatists and performers were prohibited from performing within the City of London walls – this is why Southwark, south of the Thames boomed. It boomed in the ’unsavoury arts’ banned in the City, due to this edict.
Meanwhile here north of the City, in 1576, Burbage began construction on a building he called The Theatre. It was called this because it was the first building ever erected for scenic exhibitions – which the word ’theatre’ originally meant. It also became a playhouse, situated on a footpath running from Finsbury Fields (later the line of Holywell Row) at the later junction with New Inn Yard. The term ’theatre’ changed definition to denote a playhouse.
Due to contemporary politics, the playhouse left Burbage’s hands but James Burbage simply opened a second venue in 1577. The Theatre was north of the junction with Holywell Lane. 100 metres along on the same street but south of the Holywell Lane junction he opened ’The Curtain’, named after the walled garden. The first performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was given in The Curtain. In 2012, archaeologists from Museum of London Archaeology discovered the remains of The Curtain Theatre. It was found to be rectangular in shape, rather than round or polygonal – as was more usual for many of the early theatres..
Meanwhile the lease of the land where The Theatre was built was due to expire at the end of 1598 and was set to revert to the landowner. On 28 December 1598, the wooden Theatre was dismantled, transported through The City and across the frozen Thames where it was rebuilt as The Globe in Southwark.
Plays continued at The Curtain well into the seventeenth century and it was reported as still standing in 1698.
By 1700, the street name was also called The Curtain after the garden rather than the playhouse but a century or so later was Curtain Road.
Curtain Road became home to the local wholesale furniture industry in the early 19th century. The Curtain Road Gasworks was set up in 1813 by the world’s first gas company Gas Light and Coke Company to supply the local community with municipal lighting and heating. The gasworks was closed in 1871 to make way for a railway viaduct leading into Broad Street railway station. The western part of the gasworks site became a coal yard for the railway.
Today, the northern part of Curtain Road is a busy one-way thoroughfare, linking Great Eastern Street to Old Street. The southern part of Curtain Road has some quiet streets running off it.
