Peter Street (carpenter)

Peter Street (baptised 1 July 1553, died in May 1609) was an English carpenter and builder in London in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He built the Fortune Playhouse, and probably the Globe Theatre, two significant establishments in the history of the stage in London. He had a part in building King James's Banqueting House in Whitehall Palace and he may have been responsible for the settings for the king's royal masques.

Street was the fourth of eight children of Thomas Street, a joiner from St Stephen's parish in the City of London. He was ten when his father died and was the only one of his brothers and sisters to survive into adulthood. At the age of sixteen, on Lady Day in 1570 (25 March 1570), Street was indentured for an eight-year term of apprenticeship to carpenter William Brittaine. After a year, Street's talent was noticed by Robert Maskall, an important figure in the carpenters' guild, the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, and Maskall bought Brittaine's contract for the remainder of Street's apprenticeship. Maskall introduced Street as a freeman (full member) of the guild on completion of his indentured term in March 1577.

No record of Street's marriage has been found, but this is assumed to have taken place in 1581. Street's mother had remarried in 1559 and in 1581 his stepfather, a prosperous brewer, made a gift of a house and shop to his stepson. It is probable that this was to mark Street's wedding, to one Elizabeth. Their first child, John, was born in March 1584. In due course, in August 1608, John in his turn completed his apprenticeship, becoming a freeman of the Carpenters' guild.

In August 1581, Street bought the lease to the house of his old employer Robert Maskall, a "company house" belonging to the Carpenters' guild, an indication that his business had prospered and, indeed, that he was held in good standing within his profession. In due course he was able to pay for extra land: two gardens again leased from the guild. In August 1584, he was elected liveryman of the guild with the requirement, somewhat reluctantly accepted, to represent the Company on formal occasions, and in 1598 he became its Second Warden. He could have then expected to follow his former employer, Maskall, and become guild Master but in the years following 1599 he was censured for "taking his ease" and idly neglecting guild business, and he rose no further. (Professionally he was far from idle, with pressing construction projects, such as an over-running contract to build the Fortune Theatre, taking up his time.) In 1608 the Carpenters succeeded in having him imprisoned for absence from guild meetings, but a court of City Aldermen countermanded them and he was released on the same day.

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