Bear Gardens

Walk down Bear Gardens today and you’ll find a narrow, quietly charming cobbled alley that runs south from Bankside towards Park Street. The warehouses flanking it are Georgian, their brickwork weathered and honest. Nothing about this intimate lane suggests the roar of thousands or the screams of dying animals, yet for three centuries this was one of London’s most electric entertainments.

The alley itself is old—the path was established in Tudor times as a passage between the riverside pubs and the fields beyond. But it was not formally named until much later, when the infrastructure around it had changed utterly. By 1799, the street appeared on maps bearing the name that memorialises the arena that once stood at its southern corner. That name tells a story not of flowers or market gardens, but of a brutal spectacle that shaped Southwark’s identity in the Elizabethan age.

The Bear Garden was never a garden, but rather a polygonal bearbaiting arena that operated on Bankside from at least the 1560s. It was in existence by the 1560s, when it is shown on the “woodcut” map of the city. The names of the facility and its location were merged in popular usage: John Stow, writing in 1583, calls it "The Beare-garden, commonly called the Paris garden." The arena itself stood on the site marked by a small square just north of Maid Lane. The small square into which the narrow alley now known as Bear Gardens opens, about twenty yards north of Maid Lane, marks approximately the site of the last bearbaiting ring. By 1799, the alley appeared on maps as Bear Garden, not because of a fragrant garden, but a brutal form of entertainment that took place on the southern corner of the alley. The street’s name is verified by multiple historical sources documenting the arena’s location and the shift from the unnamed alley to the named street.

The Beargarden was a facility for bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and other “animal sports” in the London area during the 16th and 17th centuries, from the Elizabethan era to the English Restoration period. Baiting is a blood sport where an animal is tormented or attacked by another animal, often dogs, for the purpose of entertainment or gambling. The Bear Garden was patronised by royalty – Queen Elizabeth I apparently visited with the French and Spanish ambassador. In 1604, Philip Henslowe (who had a financial interest in bear-baiting at least from 1594) and his son-in-law Edward Alleyn purchased the royal office of the Mastership for £450, and maintained the practice of animal baiting along with their other business of theatre production.

According to British History Online, the bears and bulls were kept in wooden pens and baited two days a week, often including Sundays. In 1613, Henslowe and new partner Jacob Meade tore down the Beargarden, and in 1614 replaced it with the Hope Theatre. The Hope was a play house for Stage Playes on Mundayes, Wedensdayes, Fridayes, and Saterdayes; and for the Baiting of the Beares on Tuesdayes and Thursdayes, the stage being made to take up and downe when they pleased. By May 1653 a parliamentary order was passed to suppress ‘bear baiting, bull baiting, and playing for prizes by fencers hitherto practised in Southwark and other places, which have caused great evils and abominations.’ A Georgian warehouse that was once The Bear Gardens Museum of the Shakespearean Stage illustrated the history of the area’s playhouses and theatres between 1972 and 1994.

Bankside in the 16th and 17th centuries was London’s pleasure district—a place where theatres, brothels, and blood sports operated in close proximity, drawing crowds from every social class. The narrow alley now called Bear Gardens carries no signage, no plaques. Most who walk it on their way to the reconstructed Globe have no idea they are treading the memorial to one of England’s oldest forms of mass entertainment. Yet the street name survives, connecting the modern visitor to a world that seemed as natural to Tudor Londoners as cinema does to us.

Bear Gardens is a short, narrow alley bounded by Bankside to the north and Park Street to the south. Georgian warehouses line both sides, their weathered red brick now home to residential apartments, studios, and small businesses. The cobblestones underfoot are original or have been carefully restored. On summer evenings, the alley fills with the murmur of conversation from cafes and the soft footsteps of tourists making their way towards Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, which sits barely a hundred metres to the east.

The street is pedestrian-focused and traffic-free, a rarity in central London. There are no traffic lights, no street furniture clotted with corporate signage. It is a place designed for walking, for noticing the architecture, for pausing. And if you know its history, it becomes something more: a tangible link to four centuries of London’s story, written into brick and stone and the persistence of a name.