Czar Street
Czar Street in Deptford, London, is the only street in the city named after a Russian monarch, marking where Peter the Great stayed in 1698 while learning shipbuilding. During his three-month stay at Sayes Court, Peter and his entourage infamously trashed diarist John Evelyn’s estate, smashing 300 windows and flattening a 400-foot holly hedge with wheelbarrows. Sir Christopher Wren later assessed the damage compensation at £350.
London · from the walk “The Tsar's Deptford” · Generated
Czar Street, Deptford SE8
- Tsar Peter the Great of Russia lived at Sayes Court in Deptford for three months in 1698.
- Standing six feet eight inches tall, Peter the Great stayed in London alongside seventy exceptionally tall soldiers.
- Peter's entourage destroyed John Evelyn's 400-foot-long and nine-foot-high holly hedge using wheelbarrows during games.
- Royal surveyor Sir Christopher Wren assessed the damage to Sayes Court, securing £350 in Treasury compensation.
- Sayes Court manor house was demolished in 1728, and the adjacent Workhouse Lane was later renamed Czar Street.
Why is Czar Street in London named after a Russian emperor?
Look around you. This modest little lane... Czar Street. It's an ordinary name on an ordinary sign, tucked between council blocks built in the nineteen sixties. But say it aloud. Czar Street. Why on earth would a quiet backstreet in Deptford carry the title of a Russian emperor?
This street is named after Peter the Great of Russia, who lived in this area for three months in sixteen ninety eight to learn the art of shipbuilding. And what a three months it was.
Peter travelled incognito under the name Peter Mikhailov. But at six feet eight inches tall, he was one of the tallest men in Europe... a fact very hard to disguise. His entourage included four chamberlains, three interpreters, seventy soldiers as tall as their monarch, four dwarves... and a monkey.
He first lodged near the Strand, but that didn't last long. It was there that Peter's pet monkey is said to have startled King William when it jumped on him during an informal visit. Not the best first impression.
Norfolk Street wasn't private enough for Peter, so in early February he moved his entourage south of the river to Sayes Court in Deptford, next door to the dockyards. The house belonged to the famous diarist John Evelyn... and what happened next became one of London's greatest tales of property destruction.
Peter and his companions knocked a hole in the wall to allow easier access to the shipyard, broke over three hundred windows, twenty paintings, and fifty chairs, ruined all the paintwork, curtains and bedding, and covered every floor with ink and grease! They used Evelyn's portrait gallery for target practice, and every chair in the house was burned for firewood.
But the most legendary act of destruction? Evelyn's pride and joy... a holly hedge, four hundred feet long, nine feet high, and five feet thick, lovingly cultivated over decades. On discovering three wheelbarrows — which hadn't yet been invented in Russia — the group devised a game in which one person sat in the wheelbarrow while another rammed it at speed into the holly hedge. Again and again, until the Entire hedge was flattened!
Sir Christopher Wren, the royal surveyor, tallied up the bill. It included three pounds specifically for "wheelbarrows broke by the Czar." The Treasury eventually paid out three hundred and fifty pounds in compensation — a fortune in those days.
Now... you're standing on the very ground where all this chaos unfolded. The site of Sayes Court lies between the present Czar Street and Sayes Court Street. According to Daniel Lysons writing in seventeen ninety six, the manor house was almost entirely demolished in seventeen twenty eight, and the remainder converted into a workhouse. The lane that ran alongside it was once called Workhouse Lane. But the memory of that wild Russian winter proved more powerful... and the street was renamed in Peter's honour.
So this unremarkable stretch of pavement is, in truth, a monument. The Only street in London named for a Russian Czar... and the last lingering echo of the night a twenty five year old emperor from Moscow crashed a wheelbarrow through an Englishman's beloved hedge.