Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. Thte northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the city of Westminster. The street originated as the medieval Via de Aldwych, which connected the St. Giles Leper Hospital with the fields of Aldwych Close. The lane took its name from the Suffolk lawyer Robert Drury, who built a mansion called Drury House on the lane in 1500. Drury House became the London house f William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven, then a public house under the sign of his reputed mistress Elizabeth of Bohemia, and the gardens and courtyards were soon replaced by rows of small houses. The remains of the house itself were cleared in 1809, by which time Drury Lane had devolved into a slum dominated by prostitution and gin palaces.