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First and Second Blackfriars Playhouses: Neville–Farrant Room-Map Source Control

Mixed Ready source map packet

First and second Blackfriars: room-map source control

Finding

The Farrant playhouse was created within premises that descended from Sir Henry Neville the elder's former holding. That is a strong documentary fact. The exact auditorium footprint inside those premises is not stated in the surviving leases.

Earlier packets turned a live reconstruction problem into a categorical distinction: Farrant in the old buttery, Burbage in the adjacent upper frater. That formulation is one scholarly map, not the language of the deeds. Chambers and Feuillerat include upper-frater space in the Neville–Farrant holding and reconstruct the first theatre accordingly. Later accounts often emphasize a northern old-buttery block. The documents support a detailed property map but not a uniquely labelled auditorium.

Evidence ladder

LevelClaimStatus
Direct lease factNeville's 1560 holding included four upper rooms, lower/service rooms, void ground, water and access rights.Strong.
Direct later lease factCobham and Farrant received six upper rooms in a holding formerly associated with Neville/Cobham.Strong.
Direct attributionThe later leases call the kitchen and its stair Neville-built and call the great stair Neville-made.Strong.
Direct retrospective statementMore's memorandum says Neville added partitions and Farrant pulled them down to make the house fit for plays.Strong printed witness; original memorandum uninspected.
Comparative reconstructionNeville's four became the later six through his partitioning.Persuasive Chambers inference; exact partition plan unstated.
Auditorium inferenceFarrant used a particular subset of those rooms as the playing room.Open; no lease labels the auditorium.
Later-theatre overlapThe 1576 and 1596 auditoria overlapped or were wholly adjacent.Depends on the chosen reconstruction.

1. Neville's 1560 holding

Feuillerat document VII prints the 10 June 1560 indenture. Its upper component is:

all that his house and lodginge conteyninge ffoure Romes

The rooms were formerly Cheke's lodging and had been used for the Queen's Revels. The lease also includes a cellar, buttery, pantry, large chimneyed lower room, void ground toward Water Lane, water, ways, entries, and passages. This was not merely a four-room apartment.

The upper holding ran roughly 157 feet north–south, about 27 feet wide at the north and 22 feet at the south. Chambers reconstructed that long strip as combining part of a northern hall-over-buttery block with an eastern division of the upper frater. His division is document-based but inferential.

2. Neville's alterations: explicit and inferred

More's later memorandum, printed by Wallace at p. 175, says:

Sr Henrie Nevell added a newe kitchen and sett vpp particions in the howse.

It later says Farrant:

pulled downe particons to make that place apte for that purpose, wc Sr Henrie

Nevell had sett vpp

The original 1560 lease says threscore yeres; this later memorandum recalls one and twenty yeres. The discrepancy warns against using the memorandum as a perfect memory of every lease detail even while its alteration history remains valuable.

The 1571 Cobham lease describes six upper rooms, two at the north and four to the south. Chambers joined the four-room 1560 description, More's explicit statement about Neville's partitions, and the later six-room descriptions to conclude that Neville turn[ed] his four rooms into six. That is a strong synthesis, but the exact partition walls are not drawn by the documents.

3. What the deeds explicitly attribute to Neville

Kitchen and kitchen stair

The Cobham lease says:

all that his newe kytchen Lately buylded by the saide Sr Henry Nevill wt the

steire leadinge oute of the same kytchen vpp into the p'misses

Farrant's lease repeats:

all that his newe kechyn Latelye buldyd by Sr henrye Neuell Knyght wth the

steyre Leadynge owt of the same kechyn vp into the p'myssj before Letten

Great stair

Farrant's lease separately grants:

the great Steyres Latelye erected and made bye the sayd Sr henrye Neuell ...

wch sayd great Steyres do serue and Leade into the p'mysses before demysed

It also grants free ingress, egress and regress to and from those stairs. The documentary fact is that Neville's stair served the leased premises. A statement that the theatre audience demonstrably climbed it is plausible but is not directly recorded by the lease.

Wainscot and round portal

The 1571 and 1576 leases describe one of the four southern rooms as wainscoted on the east, south and part of the west, with a great round portal. Farrant's lease conveys the wainscot and portal. Neither clause says made by Sir Henry Neville.

Chambers places these fittings among Neville's alterations and says Neville adorned the room. The chronology makes that possible, but it is a reconstruction. Packets should say:

The later leases describe wainscot and a great round portal in the former

Neville holding; Chambers attributed those fittings to Neville.

They should not say simply that the deed proves Neville's decoration.

4. What Farrant leased

Farrant's 20 December 1576 lease, effective from Michaelmas for twenty-one years at £14 annually, includes:

One large washing house was reserved to More. The lease thus describes a complex vertical and horizontal holding. It does not say the theatre shall occupy room X.

5. More's theatre evidence

More's later memorandum is the source that explicitly joins the property alterations to theatrical use. He says Farrant represented that he would use the house only to teach the Chapel children, but instead:

made it a Continuall howse for plays

and pulled down Neville's partitions to make the place suitable. Whatever judgment one makes about More's dispute with Farrant and the later lessees, this is a direct retrospective statement from the landlord that the playhouse adaptation occurred inside the former Neville house.

6. Competing maps

Feuillerat

Feuillerat's headnote to the Neville lease says the future theatre corresponded to part of the upper frater, part of the northern hall, and other lower rooms and cellars. This describes the entire leased property lineage, not necessarily the auditorium alone.

Chambers

Chambers reconstructs the 1560 upper holding as the eastern portion of the upper frater plus the northern hall over the buttery. He says the old frater became the first Blackfriars theatre. For 1596 he identifies Burbage's seven upper rooms as the reunited whole upper frater. Under that reconstruction, Burbage's property includes former Neville/Farrant upper-frater space, although the exact two auditorium footprints still need not be identical.

Chambers repeatedly marks his reasoning: evidently, probably, it may be inferred, and I suppose. Those signals should be retained when his map is used.

Adams and later old-buttery accounts

Joseph Quincy Adams popularized a simpler visual distinction: the smaller northern buttery block as Farrant's playhouse and the larger frater as Burbage's. His public text says the upper floor joined two former monastic buildings and then summarizes: The Buttery became Farrant's, the Frater Burbage's playhouse. See *Shakespearean Playhouses*.

O'Gorman and Lander Johnson likewise say Farrant built in the old buttery next to the upper frater and Burbage acquired the upper frater. Their note 67 sends the first-theatre statement to Sarah Dustagheer, so their article is evidence that the map is current in modern scholarship, not an independent lease demonstration. See *Early Theatre* 24.1.

Stephen Holden's 2020 thesis says Chambers and later authorities have assumed the first-theatre space was in the old buttery and guest hall. His own plan is explicitly an Author's reconstruction, with dimensions derived from Nick Holder. That is a useful modern model, but its 129 seats and stage footprint remain modeled rather than archival facts. See the Warwick thesis, printed p. 126.

7. Book-safe formulations

Strong

Richard Farrant's first Blackfriars playhouse was made within premises descended

from Sir Henry Neville the elder's former holding. Neville had added a kitchen

and partitions; the later lease expressly conveyed his kitchen, its stair, and

a great stair that served the premises. More later said Farrant pulled down

Neville's partitions to make the house fit for plays.

Precise about the room map

Farrant's lease covered upper rooms spanning the northern hall/old-buttery side

and part of the upper-frater side, together with lower and service rooms. The

lease does not identify the auditorium. Scholars have reconstructed its location

differently, so the exact overlap with Burbage's later theatre remains open.

Avoid

Sources