Endell Street was laid out in 1843-6 as part of the street improvements planned in 1839 consequent on the construction of Waterloo Bridge. The aim was to create links between Covent Garden and the West Strand and New Oxford Street and Bloomsbury where Smirke’s huge Grecian British Museum was being completed in a seeming back street. The new streets were planned by James Pennethorne, John Nash’s son-in-law, and the spirit of Nash’s Regency Metropolitan Improvements still conditioned the character of these later developments in the early-Victorian period. Endell Street bypassed Drury Lane and its flanking network of tortuous lanes.
