London’s Alleys: Cockpit Yard, WC1

This is a rough looking former stables mews that today is a mix of municipal yard and arts centre. The area though, originally developed from empty fields to the north of the Kings Way (now Theobalds Road) in the 1700s as part of the Doughty Estate, on lands owned by the Doughty and Tichborne families.The name is almost certainly from an actual cockpit near the yard, which is mentioned in Pepys Diary in March and April 1668. It was described as a building with a pointed conical roof, and its str