The Newington Butts Theatre was one of the earliest Elizabethan theatres, possibly predating even The Theatre of 1576 and the Curtain Theatre, which are usually regarded as the first playhouses built around London. William Ingram believes it was probably the first of the three to begin construction, and may have been the first completed.
Establishment The Mayor and Corporation of London banned plays in 1572 as a measure against the plague, and in 1575 they formally expelled all players from the city. This prompted the construction of playhouses outside the jurisdiction of London, in the liberties of Halliwell (in Shoreditch) and later the Clink, and at Newington near the established entertainment district of St. George's Fields. The Newington theatre was located not on Newington Butts itself, but nearby on the east side of Walworth Road near the junction with New Kent Road. The playhouse stood on less than an acre of land in Lurklane, occupying 48 yards (44 m) of frontage on what became Walworth Road and bounded to the south by a drainage ditch (or "sewer" in the language of the time). Ingram uses commission of sewers records of 1576–1578 to deduce that the actor Jerome Savage lived adjacent to the sewer and thus the playhouse was in the northern part of the plot. The Reliance Building used to occupy the site; it is now under the southern roundabout of the Elephant and Castle junction. Lurklane was 10 acres (4.0 ha) out of 35 acres (14 ha) leased in 1566 from the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral by Richard Hick(e)s. Hicks was a grocer and member of the royal retinue, sometimes described as a "yeoman of the guard". Hicks sublet Lurklane to Jerome Savage on or about Lady Day (25 March) 1576, some three weeks before the lease was signed for The Theatre in Shoreditch. However, soon after the 1576 lease was signed, Hicks and his son-in-law Peter Hunningborne tried to rescind it. They failed to do so through the courts, but used trickery to make Savage default on his rent on Lady Day 1577. Savage appears to have stayed on the premises, and in turn sought the protection of the law as Hunningborne sought to move into Savage's residence. Hunningborne described Savage as "a verrie lewed fealowe" who "liveth by noe other trade than playinge of staige plaies and Interlevdes". However the sewer assessments indicate that Savage remained on the premises, so the lawsuit may have been withdrawn or settled out of court. Wickham et al interpret these documents to mean that Hicks constructed a 'house or tenement' that someone (presumably the actor Savage) converted into a playhouse. It was clearly established by Lady Day 1577 and like the Theatre may have been in use before the winter of 1576/77, or even in 1575. Savage may have built the theatre under the patronage of the Earl of Warwick whose company of actors first performed at court on 14 February 1575. Warwick had been appointed to the Privy Council in the autumn of 1573, and the more powerful privy councillors – the earls of Sussex, Lincoln, Arundel and his younger brother Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester – were all patrons of playing companies.
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