Between 1843-1857 Samuel Hugh Newman and his family, lived at various addresses in Ship Yard, Strand. Ship Yard took its name from the Ship Tavern, which stood at the south corner, just at the east end of Butcher’s Row (which fronted the Strand to the rear of St. Clement Dane’s Church). To the left, marking the junction of Strand and Fleet Street, stood the historic Temple Bar. From the Strand, Ship Yard was barely visible as it was entered through a narrow archway beneath 246 Strand, the double-fronted Temple House, then occupied by Griffiths, Linen Draper. Ship Yard’s narrow entry gave on to a tiny court on the right before turning sharply to the left and opening out into a street almost as wide as Butcher’s Row itself. Its importance was increased, however, by the fact that it wasn’t a cul-de-sac but debouched into Little Shear or Shire Lane (a thoroughfare joining Boswell Court on the west with Shire Lane on the east).
The illustration from Max Pemberton’s The Bells of St. Clements, shows the southern end of Ship Yard with rows of tall three-storey buildings, with shop fronts at street level, some with overhanging bay windows at the first and second floors and ending with an overhanging gable at the top. A number of buildings employed mirrors hanging out at an angle on chains which were intended to reflect light from the sky above into the interiors, a common feature of dark City streets in the nineteenth century. Half way down the yard on the east side was a second small court, Chair Court, “with a fair freestone pavement.” It probably took its name from there once being a stand for sedan chairs here, although the presence of chair makers may have an equal right to having given it that title. The Strand at this period consisted of a warren of streets, courts and alleys of decayed and neglected chambers and dwelling-houses. Between 1790 and 1815 many slums and hovels had been demolished and between 1866-68 the eight acres now occupied by the Law Courts, which included Ship Yard, were cleared, causing the demolition of 343 homes with a total population of 4,125.
