In the 16th century Lyon's Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery attached to London's Inner Temple, stood on the site. By the 1860s the area had deteriorated greatly, and the old inn had been converted into what the historians Mander and Mitchenson describe as "dwellings of a dubious nature". In 1864 part of the area was cleared, and the impresario Sefton Parry built a new theatre, the Globe, which opened in 1868. He acquired an adjacent site, bounded by Wych Street, Holywell Street and the Strand, on which he built the Opera Comique two years later. The architect was Francis Fowler.