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A Playhouse, Then A Prison
Locksmith Whitecross Street: Two Very Different Centuries
One era built a rival to Shakespeare's Globe here. Another built a debtors' jail. Call 020 8534 4949 for a locksmith who knows what's actually behind each door on this stretch.
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- Whitecross Street Coverage
Covering Whitecross Street from Old Street through to the Barbican boundary. Open in Google Maps
Why Whitecross Street Is Different
Built for drama, then built for debt
In 1600, actor Edward Alleyn and his father-in-law Philip Henslowe commissioned a new playhouse here, hiring Peter Street, the carpenter who had just finished building Shakespeare's Globe across the river. The result, the Fortune Playhouse, was built to the same scale as the Globe but square rather than round, and quickly became one of London's leading venues for drama, staging work by Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd and Thomas Dekker.
It wasn't a smooth start. Local residents objected to a playhouse going up on their street, and Alleyn had to call in a favour from his company's patron, the Earl of Nottingham, to smooth things over. The theatre burned down in 1621 and was rebuilt almost immediately, continuing to stage plays until Parliament shut every London theatre in 1642.
A Debtors' Prison Took Its Place
Two centuries later, a very different kind of building rose nearby. Whitecross Street Prison opened in 1813, built specifically to ease overcrowding at Newgate. It held debtors only, never criminals, in six separate wards holding up to 500 people at a time. Locals nicknamed it Burdon's Hotel, after one of its governors, though inspectors took a dimmer view, criticising its shared wards for giving a well-behaved debtor no way to avoid the company of the genuinely rough.
One curious tradition survived from centuries earlier. Under the terms of Nell Gwynne's seventeenth-century will, £20 was distributed every year to release debtors from the prison specifically on Christmas Day. The prison closed for good in 1870, its inmates transferred to the newly built Holloway, and the site later became a railway goods depot. So this stretch has hosted a stage for Shakespeare's rivals and a jail for London's debtors within a few hundred yards of each other, separated by two centuries. Neither chapter gets more weight from us than the other when it's time to sort out a door.
In a hurry? Head straight to lockout support, book a repair, or check our around-the-clock cover.
What Whitecross Street Residents & Businesses Call About
The jobs this stretch actually brings in
Peabody Estate Flats
Social housing built here in the 1860s still houses residents today, often with fittings that reflect several generations of upkeep. A careful lock repair respects that history.
Book aheadMarket Traders & Food Stalls
Businesses serving the street's lunchtime crowds need dependable commercial security, whether a fixed unit or a daily stall.
Book aheadLockouts During Busy Trading Hours
Footfall spikes hard around midday here. Fast, unobtrusive entry matters when a crowd's watching.
Same-day priorityFlats Above Shopfronts
Residential units sitting over trading premises sometimes carry hardware fitted for a different layout entirely. A proper lock replacement corrects that.
Book aheadBroken Or Snapped Keys
Older estate ironmongery and a fresh-cut key can be an awkward match. See our broken keys page for how we handle it.
Call nowOut-of-Hours Emergencies
Trade hours here don't match a typical office day. Our out-of-hours line covers whatever hour a fault turns up.
Call nowFor clarity on scope: our work covers physical locks and door hardware — fitting, repair and replacement. We don't offer key cutting, and a building's shared entry system stays with its own managing agent.
Locked Out On Whitecross Street
How a stuck door here usually resolves
In the Peabody Estate buildings, expect hardware that's been maintained through generations of tenants rather than left entirely original. We check what's genuinely fitted before deciding on an approach.
Above the shops and market stalls, doors tend to run a mixed bag: some genuinely period, others swapped out much more recently. We form no assumption either way until we've actually looked.
Force stays off the table until every gentler option's been ruled out. That approach alone clears most lockouts on this street.
Between a sheared key and a lost one, the sheared version is nearly always the quicker fix. Have a look at broken keys and lost keys to see why.
Around Whitecross Street
The streets nearby
Runs parallel, once the theatre's other boundary.
The small pocket bordering the market's northern end.
Absorbed the street's southern stretch, now Silk Street.
Forms the northern end of this stretch.
The wider postcode this street sits within.
The six-postcode overview, for context on the wider patch we cover.
What We Do
Services on Whitecross Street
Same Street, Different Eras
What survives from four centuries of change
The Fortune Playhouse's original construction contract has survived, remarkably, among Edward Alleyn's own papers. The Henslowe-Alleyn digitisation project has made that document, and much of the theatre's financial record, freely available online.
Almost nothing physical remains from either the playhouse or the prison today. What stands now is a mix of Victorian-era rebuilding, the Peabody Trust's social housing from the 1860s, and later twentieth-century infill, layered over ground that's hosted wildly different institutions across four centuries.
That layering means two doors on the same block can date from entirely different decades, even when the buildings look superficially alike from the street.
Not sure where your building fits? Just describe it when you ring, and we'll work out the right approach together.
The Process
Booking a locksmith Whitecross Street callout
- Reach outPhone or WhatsApp, whatever's quickest for you.
- Tell us the settingEstate flat or shopfront makes a real difference to the plan.
- We look before we quotePrice follows a hands-on look at the door.
- One visit does itComing back isn't the usual outcome.
Access & Traffic
Reaching you along this stretch
Midday trading brings a genuine crush of pedestrians to the northern half of the street, and vehicle access tightens noticeably during that window. Timing a visit around the lunch rush, rather than through it, saves everyone time.
Head south and the character shifts fast, where the Barbican Estate's boundary brings its own access rules and a distinctly more modern layout.
Solid transport links help make up for the road congestion, and we lean on both when working out the quickest way to you.
Why People Call Us
What keeps this street's regulars coming back
- We look twice before deciding. Age at a glance is rarely the whole picture.
- Force is the last resort. Never the first move, whatever the lock.
- At ease in a busy trading street. Crowds don't rush the job.
- Homes and shops, same standard. Residential and commercial work, treated equally seriously.
- No overreach on scope. Locks and hardware only — not cutting keys, not touching access panels.
- On call any hour. This street doesn't keep office hours, and neither do we.
Nearby
Areas around Whitecross Street
Common Questions
The Fortune Playhouse
Was this theatre genuinely connected to Shakespeare's own Globe?
Indirectly, yes. It was built by the same carpenter, Peter Street, straight after he finished the Globe, though it staged a rival company's plays rather than Shakespeare's own.
Did local people actually object to the theatre being built?
Yes. Objections from nearby residents were serious enough that the theatre's backer had to call in a favour from a powerful patron to get the project through.
Why did the theatre eventually close for good?
Parliament ordered every London theatre shut in 1642, a Puritan-era decision that ended the venue along with every other playhouse in the city.
What kind of plays did it actually stage?
Serious Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, including works by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, alongside other forms of popular entertainment of the day.
The Debtors' Prison
Did the prison genuinely only hold people in debt, not criminals?
Yes, that was its entire purpose, built specifically to ease overcrowding at Newgate for non-criminal cases.
Is the Christmas Day release story actually true?
As far as the historical record shows, yes. A seventeenth-century will provided an annual sum specifically to release debtors on that day.
What replaced the prison after it closed?
A railway goods depot went up on the site not long after, reflecting how quickly the area's use changed once the prison shut.
Booking On Whitecross Street
Do you cover the whole street, market end to the Barbican boundary?
Yes, we treat it as one patch rather than splitting coverage by section.
Does the busy lunchtime crowd slow down how fast you can get to me?
Yes, we plan our routing around that surge rather than letting it delay a response.
What if I live in one of the estate blocks with a less obvious address?
Flag that when you get in touch — we know these blocks well and can pin down the details with you.
Is genuine out-of-hours cover realistic for a trading street like this?
Yes, genuinely. Trade doesn't run on a fixed clock here, so neither do we.
Do you charge extra to work near a market stall rather than a normal shopfront?
No, cost reflects the job itself, not the type of premises it happens to be.
A playhouse's ghost, a prison's memory. One number today.
Estate flat or shopfront, old building or new — ring or message us and we'll line up an engineer who's familiar with this street's odd double past.