Drury Street

Running parallel to George’s Street, Drury Street dates to the mid-17th century.

It appears on De Gomme’s map of 1673 as ‘Little Butter Lane¹ and as ‘Little Boater Lane’ on Rocque’s map of 1756.² That name, and its various later forms, derives from the Irish An Bóthar Beag (‘the little road’). An Bóthar Beag remains the official Irish name of the street today.³

Listed in street directories as Little Butter Lane, Little Boater Lane, and Little Booter Lane from 1761 onwards,⁴ the street was already being referred to as ‘Drury Lane’ by 1781,⁵ and appears under that name in directories from 1782 onwards.⁶

Following the opening of the South City Market in 1881,⁷ the Market Company requested that Dublin Corporation rename Drury Lane as ‘South Market Street’.⁸ The Corporation instead changed the name to Drury Street.⁹

The suggestion that the name ‘Drury’ derives from William Drury, Lord Justice of Ireland, who died in 1579, is implausible.¹⁰ The name ‘Drury’ only became linked to the street 200 years after his death and it makes no sense at all for the name to have been changed to honour a long dead English administrator.

In any case, the names of lanes generally arose informally and organically and it’s likely that the name derived from someone called Drury who owned premises on the street or by some association with ‘Drury Lane’ in London. It’s also worth noting that there was another Drury Lane, north of the river, off Barrack Street.

1. Bernard De Gomme, The city and suburbs of Dublin, from Kilmainham to Rings-End wherein the rivers, streets, lanes, allys, churches, gates & c. are exactly described, 1673, 1673.
2. John Rocque, An Exact Survey of the City and Suburbs of Dublin (1756).
3. Logainm: An Bóthar Beag / Drury Street
4. Wilson’s Dublin Directory (1761).
5. Saunders’s News-Letter, 26 September 1781, p. 1.
6. Wilson’s Dublin Directory (1782).
7. Freeman’s Journal, 27 October 1881, p. 6.
8. Reports 1882/120.
9. Minutes 1882/413.
10. Frank McNally, ‘Trial by Drury’, Irish Times, 18 July 2024.