London’s Mysterious Underground Street: The Story of Lower Robert Street

Just off the Strand and missed by most is one of London’s most unusual streets: Lower Robert Street.

Off York Buildings is a dark, vaulted passage. Head down here and you find a sloping, winding street.

It then takes a sharp turn to the right, passing a large underground garage and a series of storage units.

You eventually emerge onto Savoy Place, tucked at the top of the Victoria Embankment. If you keep heading along you will come to the back entrance to the Savoy Hotel.

Today it is a popular diversion for taxi drivers and bike couriers, nicknamed the ‘Bat Cave’. The street pattern and route themselves are odd, but Lower Robert Street also has a remarkable over 250 year story. It is a surviving fragment of one of Georgian London’s most ambitious developments: the Adelphi, a grand residential district built above a vast network of subterranean vaults and passageways.

Today, the original development has largely disappeared, but there are a few clues and traces if you know where to look.

You can see the location of Lower Robert Street below:

Origins

Prior to the late 17th century this stretch of the riverside was very different. It was lined with the mansions and palaces of some of the country’s most powerful figures.

To the west stood York House, which became the London residence of the Dukes of Buckingham. George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, a favourite of James I and Charles I sold the house in 1672 and it was demolished. There are a few clues in the street names: Villiers Street, Buckingham Street etc. Its most recognisable surviving remnant is the magnificent York Watergate, built in 1626. It was once by the riverside, but it is now cut off from its original purpose after the Victoria Embankment was constructed in the 1860s.

To the east stood Durham House, formerly the residence of the Bishops of Durham and later home to a succession of important figures, including the Earl of Leicester and the Duke of Northumberland.

Durham House was sold off, rented out and demolished piecemeal over the course of the 17th and early 18th centuries. 

The former estates then became a crowded mixture of streets, houses, warehouses and wharves, with the muddy foreshore of the Thames providing a rather unglamorous backdrop.

One of the principal areas here was known as Durham Yard.

The Adam Brothers

It was on this rundown riverside site that the Adam brothers architects spied an opportunity for a new grand development. 

The Adam brothers were John, Robert, James and William Adam, who grew up in Scotland and set up a highly successful architecture and design company. Robert was the primary architectural mastermind with James his key designing partner.

He developed the signature ‘Adam style’, after going on a four year Grand Tour of Europe where he studied ancient ruins.

He created a neo-classical style that replaced heavy Palladian proportions with something more delicate and graceful. For example, he introduced curved walls, oval rooms and domes. Light pastel colours were preferred and extensive decoration in the form of intricate plasterwork, urns, medallions and fan motifs, often drawing on Roman and Renaissance sources. They would also not just design the exterior, but every detail on the interior to create a unified, harmonious scheme. 

Other Adam brothers works include Syon House and Kenwood House, which I have written about here. I have also previously written about the Adam Room hidden inside the Lloyds of London building here. 

The Adelphi

They designed and built here The Adelphi, a highly ambitious development: almost a town within a town. The name Adelphi came from the Greek word for ‘brothers’. 

The land was leased from the Duke of St Albans, the great-grandson of Nell Gwynn. They embanked the river and to tackle the 40 feet height difference between the foreshore and the Strand, a series of massive vaulted brick warehouses, wharves and subterranean streets were constructed. This then provided the flat base on which a grand residential terrace could be built overlooking the river. It was built to one consistent neo-classical pattern, the whole structure being inspired by the ruins of Emperor Diocletian’s Palace at Split. 

Around that central block, known as Adelphi terrace or Royal Terrace, were a series of side streets. The brothers named the surrounding streets after themselves, so you have Robert Street, Adam Street etc. These have a number of surviving Adam houses on them today including the beautiful Royal Society of Arts building.

The work was carried out from 1768-1774, with a whopping 2,000 people involved in the construction.

The costs unfortunately rapidly escalated out of control. The family firm was nearly bankrupted, particularly after the Scottish banking crisis in 1772. To clear their debts and dispose of remaining properties, they organised a private parliamentary-sanctioned lottery. 4,370 tickets were sold at £50 each, raising a total of £218,500. There were 108 prizes, including entire houses and other property. The brothers even included valuable paintings and sculptures among the assets being disposed of.

Famous residents

The Adelphi attracted a series of famous names over the years. For example, the famous 18th century actor David Garrick (1716-1779) spent the last seven years of his life living on Royal Adelphi Terrace and frequently hosted Dr Samuel Johnson there. The Adam brothers themselves relocated there in 1772.

J M Barrie, the Scottish novelist and playwright best known for creating Peter Pan, lived at Adelphi Terrace House for many years. Other names include George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Hardy.

Dickens lived adjacent to The Adelphi on Buckingham Street and used the moody, labyrinthine arches and vaults as inspiration for various settings in his work, most famously in David Copperfield where the eponymous character also resides on Buckingham Street by the Adelphi. He describes the lower section as ‘a mysterious place, with those dark arches’.

Decline

The Victorians were not kind to the Adelphi. The Victoria Embankment was constructed in the 1860s cutting it off from the river. This rendered the subterranean wharves obsolete and the arches and vaults gained a reputation as a gathering place for the homeless, outcasts, and gangs.

The unified frontages of the houses were also adapted, with stucco added and the coherent look was lost.

Demolition

The Adelphi was eventually sold in 1927 and largely demolished in the 1930s. In 1936, auctions sold off many of the original features including fireplaces, columns and balconies.

On the site today you will find the Art Deco Adelphi office building, constructed from 1936–1938 by Stanley Hamp of Collcutt and Hamp. It is worth having a look at as it is covered with little quirky Art Deco details. This building itself is now Grade II listed and protected. 

There are however a few reminders that remain of the original development, the surviving Georgian properties, the street names and there is even an old cobbled passage inside the Royal Society of Arts building. 

The new Adelphi building still features a terrace, and a series of arches down on the embankment. 

But the most atmospheric fragment of the original development is Lower Robert Street.

It survives as part of the old subterranean network, a reminder of the extraordinary engineering that allowed the Adam brothers to construct an entire neighbourhood above the sloping riverbank.

Lower Robert Street is shut between midnight and 7am apparently but otherwise is free to wander down. Some say the dark street is haunted by the ghost of ‘Poor Jenny’, a destitute lady who lived in one of the arches. Some say she was murdered, but even early accounts say that nothing is really known about her.

So yes, it might not be the most glamorous surviving part of the Adelphi, but it is arguably one of the most interesting. A small, overlooked reminder of a much grander vision, hiding in plain sight beneath the streets of London.

Thank you for reading, more of London’s overlooked history below!