Explore London - Historic Covent Garden
Royal Opera House, Street Performers,Restaurants,Theatres,Bars
Mar 17, 2007
Behind the bustling Strand with its glossy hotels and theatres is a small area known as Covent Garden. A tangle of winding narrow streets, this is the place to recapture the atmosphere of bygone days. Many of the streets are still lit by old gas lamps, and in their soft glow it is easy to take a step back into the nineteenth century.
London - Covent Garden - An Historic Area of London
These are the streets that Nell Gwynne wandered when she sold oranges at the old Theatre Royal in Drury Lane before becoming the mistress of King Charles II in 1665, and the area is chock full of history. Over the centuries, many famous people have made this their home. American painter Benjamin West lived on Bedford Street in 1763, and it was on Henrietta Street, still in the eighteenth century, that British playwright Richard Sheridan fought a duel. He and his opponent cut each other up so badly that pistols replaced swords as the fashionable dueling weapon.
Over five hundred years ago Covent Garden was a vegetable garden that belonged to the monks of Westminster Abbey. Produce for the monastery was grown here, with any surplus being distributed to the poor and needy who gathered at the gates. Out of this grew the huge Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market which supplied the whole of London for 300 years.
London - Covent Garden - How it Changed Over the Centuries
In the seventeenth century Covent Garden was one of London’s most stylish residential areas, and the terraced houses built around the Piazza were occupied by the richest and most aristocratic of London Society. However, the area began to deteriorate and by the middle of the eighteenth century nearly all the fashionable Londoners had moved out.
Gradually, the character of the area changed for the better. As well as being the venue for the wonderful fruit and vegetable market, it became home to famous publishers, printers, restaurants, and theatres, and remained this way for over 200 years. The market became increasingly congested, and had you visited it any time before 1974, you would have found it humming with the activity of hundreds of porters, trundling their heavy wooden trolleys over the cobblestones, carrying all manner of fruits, vegetables, and exotic flowers.
As London’s traffic became heavier, so the congestion in and around Covent Garden increased until the situation was intolerable. Huge trucks blocked the small surrounding streets as they filled up with produce for the whole of London. In 1974 the decision was taken to move the fruit and vegetable market to Battersea on the other side of the River Thames and the vibrant, new Covent Garden was born.
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