This is a narrow, fairly modern-looking gap between two roads, but it is an old legacy of when part of Westminster was a notorious slum.
Today, we have St Ann’s Lane running parallel to St Ann’s Street.
The alley shows up on William Morgan’s 1682 map as a wide passage marked as Little St Ann’s Lane to differentiate it from Great St Ann’s Lane. However, by 1799, it’s on R Horwood’s map as a narrow passage lined with small houses and a smaller side passage known as Pipemakers Alley.
This was also about the time that the two St Ann’s lost their Little and Great – becoming plain St Ann’s Street and St Ann’s Lane.
OS Map 1869
Although today it’s a mixed area of social housing and offices, at one time it was a poor slum known as the Devil’s Acre. So notorious was it, that the reforming Charles Dickens featured it in his first edition of Household Words in 1850 as an area that needed help.
It was his article that popularised the nickname of the Devil’s Acre, and worked to shame the government into improving the lives of the people crammed into the slum housing.
“There is no part of the metropolis which presents a more chequered aspect, both physical and moral, than Westminster. The most lordly streets are frequently but a mask for the squalid districts which lie behind them, whilst spots consecrated to the most hallowed of purposes are begirt by scenes of indescribably infamy and pollution; the blackest tide of moral turpitude that flows in the capital rolls its filthy wavelets up to the very walls of Westminster Abbey.”
Its proximity to the wealth and power of government was seen as a particular stain on the government’s reputation.
Rather than getting better, conditions actually worsened, mainly due to the construction of Victoria Street, which displaced more people into the slum area. The 1861 census for nearby Pye Street recorded that over 120 people were crammed into a single building.
Eventually, the area was redeveloped, mainly by the philanthropic Peabody housing in the 1870s, which gives the area its modern appearance of mansion blocks for housing, a small school and lots of offices for government adjacent organisations.
It’s actually a good reminder that parts of central London are still mostly residential, and it’s not all offices and shops.
Today, very little of the heritage of St Ann’s Lane remains. The modern brick building on the southeastern corner is the Indonesian embassy, while opposite is a 1960s brutalist office block, 32-34 Great Peter Street.
That office block is earmarked for demolition to be replaced with housing. A bit further down is St Matthew’s primary school, and the Westminster School of Performing Arts.
One interesting feature is under the 1970s housing block which included very classic of the time concrete air blocks for the car park, but the cars have long since been banished, and the air blocks now covered in glass.
And at the end is the offices of the Thorney Island Society, which is marking its 40th anniversary this year.
The alley was also the birthplace in 1659 of the music composer, Henry Purcell – and there’s a memorial to him nearby on Victoria Street.