EXETER STREET

WHEN Exeter Street was first built (about the year 1677),

and named after the town house of Cecil, Earl of Exeter, son of the great Lord Burghley, it extended from Catherine Street on the east to the wall of Bedford Yard, afterwards Covent Garden, on the west. Since that date the street has undergone many changes; there was no outlet originally at the west end, but it can now be approached from that side by Burleigh Street from the Strand.

Exeter Street just escaped destruction in the extensive devastation of the neighbouring district in the so-called Aldwych improvements, but the southern portion of Catherine Street, which formed its east-end boundary, was cleared away. One other important alteration in Exeter Street was when it was bisected by the new Wellington Street, in the early years of the nineteenth century.

The chief interest of Exeter Street lies in the fact that it was here that Dr. Johnson had his first London lodgings in 1737," at the house of one Norris, a stay-maker." The identity of the exact house is not now known, it may have been destroyed, or it may have been one of the old buildings depicted in Mr. Fletcher's drawing. Most of the houses in this short street are now of recent date. Johnson, however, appears to have occupied a garret, for he admitted that he wrote the report which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine of one of Lord Chatham's best

speeches “in a garret in Exeter Street." It was while he was living in this street that Johnson completed his poem "London"; and used to dine "very well for eightpence, with good company, at the Pine Apple in New Street just by I

had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny, so that I was quite well served, nay better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing."

R. I.