This feature first appeared in February 2024 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.

“Roupell Street… should be renamed White Curtain Street, since the window of every house (and there are nearly 130) is draped with white curtains. It seems to be the hobby of the respective housewives to vie with each other both in the whiteness and scrupulous cleanness of these ornaments. Every foot scraper in the street is also highly polished.”
- Western Times, 24 May 1904
A working-class terrace for most of its history, Roupell Street near Waterloo is today home to millionaires. But it has always taken pride in its appearance, as shown by the Edwardian press cutting above.
Its timeless charms have made Roupell Street the star of countless TikTok and Instagram posts. The street has also proved popular with film-makers. Hundreds of movies and TV shows have featured the famous Roupellian backdrop of sawtooth rooftops and vintage street lamps. Call the Midwife, Whitechapel, New Tricks, Slow Horses, Doctor Who, Eastenders… even James Bond has payed a visit. In No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s version of the spy calls on gadget-master Q at his home in Roupell Street.
You’d need more than an MI6 salary to buy a property here today, but the street has much humbler origins. Indeed, they could hardly have been more humble.
Swamps, gardens and clowns
62 million people use Waterloo station each year. Millions more visit the South Bank. But step back a few hundreds years and you’ll find yourself alone, and knee-deep in mud. For much of London’s history, this well-trodden land was not really land at all, but a swampy backwater called Lambeth Marsh or Lambethmoor.
The waters were drained in the 18th century, but their miry memory persists in the street names of Lower Marsh and Upper Marsh, just south of Waterloo station.
The reclaimed land was put to agricultural and leisure use, as can be seen in John Rocque’s map of 1746. Dozens of crop-growing fields are shown, alongside tenter grounds for drying cloth.

The land on which Roupell Street would emerge first enters history around 1767, when it appears in news reports as “Halfpenny Hatch”. (This was a common name for minor toll gates; another could be found in Bermondsey.) Halfpenny Hatch served as a convenient cut-through between the area’s two north-south routes, but you’d be charged a halfpenny for the pleasure.

These little-heeded fields were about to witness one of the most important moments in the history of entertainment. It was right here, on Easter Monday, 1768, that Philip and Patty Astley put on a horse-riding show, interspersed by acts from a clown. This was the humble beginnings of Asltey’s Circus, one of London’s great 18th and 19th century venues, which pretty much invented circus as we know it.
Astley’s permanent circus would be built a little further north, where St Thomas’s Hospital stands today, but its origins were right here in the fields of Lambeth — probably where the green lozenge is shown, centre-left, on the map above.

The area quickly changed in character as housing and industry encroached. The map above shows an iron works and lead works just north of Halfpenny Hatch. These proved deeply unpopular with early residents. The proprietor of the lead works was hauled before a magistrate in 1819 (same year as the map) for releasing noxious fumes “affecting all those who respired it, with head-aches, inflammations in the eyes, and a sensation similar to suffocation”. No fewer than 23 witnesses came forward to register their complaints.
The name of the reckless smelter? John Roupell.
The unscrupulous Roupells
John Roupell wasn’t just some random menace to public health. He also happened to be the local land owner. Back in 1792, Roupell had bought up seven acres of Lambeth fields, which he gradually set about developing.
Roupell Street as we know it was first laid out in 1824 — exactly 200 years ago at the time this article was written. Its original occupants were all working class. The Lambeth Estate Residents Association (LERA) website lists typical occupations as “builders, joiners, printers, furniture makers, saddlers, blacksmiths, clothing makers, butchers, bakers, teachers or nurses”. All would have rented their properties from the Roupells, with as many as 20 people living in each house.

The Roupell family held onto the land for many years, amassing a fortune from rents and building up a property empire that included land in Streatham. They seem to have had a talent for mischief. Family pastimes included document forgery, fraud and internecine deceit. Rather than tell the whole epic story — which even includes a redemption arc — I instead refer you to the excellent LERA website.
Roupell Street continued for decades as a fairly typical 19th century terrace. The newspapers are full of the usual stories of petty thefts, publicans adulterating their beer, and minor scuffles between neighbours. One story caught my eye, however, as it relates to another recent Londonist article. Long-time readers might remember the ‘earthquake scare’ of 1842, a spurious prophecy that convinced many Londoners to flee the doomed capital. It seems that the phantom quake did in fact claim at least one victim. 19 year old Emma Edmonds was so affected by the prophecy that she took her own life by jumping into the Thames. The coroner’s enquiry took place at the King’s Arms, the pub which still stands on Roupell Street.
Motoring Matters

If you walk along Roupell Street today, chances are you’ll notice a classic car or two, especially Citroëns. They’ve been here for decades, by all accounts, owned by a local enthusiast and photographed by just about everybody who passes by — myself very much included.
It’s ironic that Roupell Street is now celebrated for its vintage cars, because motors were once the bane of the place. In 1912, the Daily Herald dubbed it Peril Street, because of the danger to life from motor traffic.
As we’ve seen, the street has always been a convenient cut-through, from its earliest days as the ‘Halfpenny hatch’. 20th century Roupell Street was a popular route with workers arriving at Waterloo and heading to the City or local factories on foot. But it also teemed with children thanks to the presence of three schools in the area. At times, the street’s narrow pavements could not cope and pedestrians spilled into the carriageway. The words “veritable deathtrap” were deployed in the press. The street sadly became an actual deathtrap when, in 1910, a boy was killed by a speeding vehicle.
Calls were made to ban motor traffic down Roupell Street, or at least introduce a speed restriction of 6mph. This would have been a very early example of an “LTN”, or low-traffic neighbourhood. A Local Government Board enquiry was set up but, bizarrely, it found no grounds for imposing speed restrictions. Local campaigners complained that inspectors had turned up at the quietest time, and that the dangers were best witnessed in the early morning. But all to no avail.

Roupell Street today is heavily controlled. Motorists must enter from side streets and are restricted to 20mph. Only cyclists can ride right through. This is all for the good, as it allows us to appreciate Roupell Street in all its handsome glory.
If you’re paying a visit to the street (and its almost equally evocative neighbours of Theed Street and Whittlesey Street), be sure to pop into the King’s Arms. The main bar of this historic pub, scene of many coroners’ inquests in the 19th century, is as timeless as the streetscape outside. The magnificent back conservatory has hosted a Thai kitchen for over two decades, which is approaching ‘historic’ in its own right.
But some things do change here. At the time of writing, a modest two-bedroom terrace house on the street is on sale for £1.8 million. It’s quite a step up from the Halfpenny Hatch of yore.