Stories
Not far from the theatres, still on the north side of the Strand, is the world-famous Stanley Gibbons stamp shop.
Stanley Gibbons. Photo taken April 2012.
Their website shows what the shop looked like in the late-nineteenth century, when it was at 391 Strand:
Stanley Gibbons, founded in 1856, on the late-Victorian Strand. Images from the Stanley Gibbons website.
In the 1720s, Mrs Holt's Italian Warehouse (a warehouse was a sort of 18th-century department store) in the Strand opposite Exeter Change. According to the trade card that William Hogarth engraved for her, she stocked Read more »
A few doors down from the Adelphi is the pretty building which houses the Vaudeville Theatre.Built in 1870, Henry Irving acted on this stage for a while, as Ronald Bergan's book The Great Theatres of London tells us.
Vaudeville Theatre today.
Interior of the newly-opened Vaudeville Theatre in 1870. Westminster Archives Centre.
In 1996 a long-lost masque by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones was rediscovered. It is called 'The Entertainment at Britain's Burse'. As Brian Vickers explains in the 'Times Literary Supplement' (17 Feb. 2012; p. 7): 'This was commissioned by Robert Cecil to celebrate the opening in 1609 of the New Exchange, Cecil's grand new shopping mall in the Strand, designed to draw customers to the West End, away from Gresham's Royal Exchange in the city'. Vickers goes on to say: 'Imagine Tom Stoppard and David Hockney collaborating on a show for the Westfield shopping centre'. Read more »
Carrying on along the north side of the Strand, heading east towards Fleet Street and away from Trafalgar Square, we reach the Adelphi theatre.
The Adelphi theatre today.
“Adjoining the Lowther Arcade…is the Adelaide Gallery, originally intended as a place of amusement and instruction combined. It was first opened in the year 1830, and named after Queen Adelaide, the consort of William IV [and] thus cleverly sketched by the late Mr. Read more »
Shopping! This was a major activity on the Strand in the nineteenth-century, and West Strand was the site of the renowned Lowther Arcade (near where Coutts stands today):
The Lowther Arcade, from The Mirror, April 7 1832. Westminster Archives Centre.
This covered shopping area was a favoured destination for whiling away the time in bad weather. You could buy toys and other gifts here.