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The Blackfriars Playhouse
Playhouse Yard a small back street dwarfed by a new red bricked American Bank, built on the previous site of the Times Newspaper Building. This unobtrusive yard once housed The Blackfriars Theatre, an Elizabethan Playhouse that was obtained by James Burbage in February, 1596, and purchased from the executors of Sir Thomas Cawarden estate, for the price of £600 a large amount of money in those days.
The land had previously been part of the Dominican monks or Blackfriars and formed part of their monastery, that was to end by the act of Henry VIII dissolving all London's monasteries. Burbage had obtained these rooms, both large and small, cellars and yards and including seven great upper rooms”, which had formerly been one great room. Turning these rooms into a playhouse. It was in 1608 that the regular players that included William Shakespeare obtained a part ownership in the company. Other than the name Playhouse Yard there is very little left to remind us of the theatre that once stood here, except the small piece of black wall that stands at the corner of the building that was part of Elizabethan Playhouse.
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