Salisbury Court Theatre

According to contemporary chronicler Edmund Howes, "a new faire Play-house" was erected in 1629, just to the west of the medieval walls of the City of London, between Fleet Street and the River Thames, in a building converted from a barn or granary in the grounds of Dorset House.

Yet since it was on a plot of land 42 feet (13 meters) wide, it may have resembled, to some greater or lesser degree, the plan for a small theatre drawn by Inigo Jones in the later Jacobean or Caroline era, which adheres to a very similar scale.

[1] The Salisbury Court was built at a cost of £1,000 by Richard Gunnell, a veteran actor and the manager of the Fortune, and William Blagrave, deputy to Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels.

In March 1649, the authorities destroyed the interior of the Salisbury Court theatre, and the Fortune and the Cockpit too, making them useless for public performances.

After years of being banned in the Interregnum, theatre was again permitted on the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, with the grant of two Letters patent to two companies to perform "legitimate drama" in London.