Covent Garden - Other information

A square in C London, UK, known for the fruit and vegetable market that operated there for nearly three centuries; it also gives its name to the Royal Opera House close by. Once the garden of a convent in Westminster, the site was developed in the 17th-c. It was initially a fashionable area, but with the growth of the market wealthy families moved away, and cheap coffee houses and lodging houses sprang up. The market was relocated in 1974, and the buildings restored by the Greater London Council.

Covent Garden is a district in central London straddling the easternmost parts of the City of Westminster and the southwest corner of the London Borough of Camden. The area is dominated by shopping and entertainment facilities and contains an entrance to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, which is also widely known simply as "Covent Garden," and the bustling Seven Dials area. Covent Garden Piazza is located in the geographical centre of the area and was the site of a flower, fruit and vegetable market from the 1500s until 1974, when the wholesale market relocated to New Covent Garden Market in Nine Elms.

"Convent Garden" (later corrupted to Covent Garden as we know it today) was the name given, during the reign of King John (1199–1256), to a 40 acre (160,000 m²) patch in the county of Middlesex, bordered west and east by what is now St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane, and north and south by Floral Street and a line drawn from Chandos Place, along Maiden Lane and Exeter Street to the Aldwych.

In this quadrangle the Abbey or Convent of St. Peter, Westminster, maintained a large kitchen garden throughout the Middle Ages to provide its daily food. Over the next three centuries, the monks' old "convent garden" became a major source of fruit and vegetables in London and was managed by a succession of leaseholders by grant from the Abbot of Westminster. Forty acres (160,000 m²), known as "le Covent Garden" plus "the long acre", were granted by royal patent in perpetuity to the Earl of Bedford.

1600s to 1800s

The modern-day Covent Garden has its roots in the early 17th century when land ("the Convent's Garden") was redeveloped by Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford. He was inspired by late 15th century and early 16th century planned market towns known as bastides (themselves modelled on Roman colonial towns by way of nearby monasteries, of which "Convent" Garden was one). The area rapidly became a base for market traders, and following the Great Fire of London of 1666 which destroyed 'rival' markets towards the east of the city, the market became the most important in the country. Today Covent Garden is the only part of London licensed for street entertainment.

Modern day period

By the end of the 1960s, traffic congestion in the surrounding area had reached such a level that the use of the square as a market, which required increasingly large lorries for deliveries and distribution, was becoming unsustainable. The following year the market finally moved to a new site (called the New Covent Garden Market) about three miles south-west at Nine Elms.

The marketplace and Royal Opera House were memorably brought together in the opening of George Bernard Shaw's play, Pygmalion, where Professor Higgins is waiting for a cab to take him home from the opera when he comes across Eliza Doolittle selling flowers in the market.

In the mid-1950s, before he directed such films as If... and O Lucky Man!, Lindsay Anderson directed a short film about the daily activities of the Covent Garden market called Every Day Except Christmas. It shows 12 hours in the life of the market and market people, now long gone from the area, but it also reflects three centuries of tradition in the operation of the daily fruit and vegetable market.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1972 film, Frenzy, likewise takes place amongst the pubs and fruit markets of Covent Garden. Hitchcock was the son of a Covent Garden merchant and grew up in the area; Supermodel Naomi Campbell was also discovered by a model scout at the age of 15 whilst walking through the streets of Covent Garden.

In a somewhat different musical tradition, Covent Garden's Neal Street was home to the famous punk club The Roxy in 1977.

A street performer in front of the Market

Other information

Nearest London Underground stations:

Covent Garden (Piccadilly Line) Charing Cross (Northern Line, Bakerloo Line, National Rail) Leicester Square (Piccadilly Line, Northern Line) Holborn (Piccadilly Line, Central Line) Embankment (Circle Line, District Line, Northern Line and Bakerloo Line)