Yorkshire Grey Yard, WC1

Yorkshire Grey Yard is one of the lost streets of London – confusingly it is not to be confused with the modern Yorkshire Grey Yard, also off Eagle Street but not in the same location as the nineteenth-century street of this name

The 1841 census places it between 53 and 54 Eagle Street, on the north side of the street

Horwood’s maps of 1799 and 1819 do not name a Yorkshire Grey Yard or show any yard in the modern position, nor do the numbers on Eagle Street reach 53 or 54 on this map

The Ordnance Survey map of 1867–1870 also does not name a Yorkshire Grey Yard or show any yard in the modern position, although it does show numerous alleys and courts leading off Eagle Street, many of them not named

One in particular of these is close to a building marked as a public house, just west of Leigh Street; this seems likely to have been the original Yorkshire Grey Yard

A report in The Times in 1830 makes reference to the Yorkshire Grey pub on Eagle Street, which is presumably the original pub after which the yard was named (The Times, 28 April 1830)

In the 1841 census, there was a single dwelling inhabited by two families of grooms; it may well have been stables

In 1851 there were two slaughterhouses here; the Holborn Registrar attributed three recent deaths and two hospitalisations of residents of 53 Eagle Street, which overlooked the slaughterhouses, to infections from this source (Medical Times, 13 September 1851)

The London and Suburban Licensed Victuallers’, Hotel and Tavern Keepers’ Directory of 1874 lists the Yorkshire Grey pub (kept by Walter Stebbings) at no. 54 Eagle Street

The yard is not listed in the 1881 census, nor is there anything listed between nos 53 and 54 Eagle Street. And it is also not to be confused with Yorkshire Grey Yard in Hampstead

Source: The Bloomsbury Project

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