Qualla: Covent Garden

Covent Garden: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Calton, CC BY 2.5. The name is older than London likes to admit. "Covent" is Anglo-French for a religious community, equivalent to convent or monastery. Before there was a piazza, before there were street performers and Apple Stores, this was a forty-acre walled garden belonging to the Benedictine monks of Westminster Abbey, growing fruit, grazing pasture, sitting quietly behind a high wall between modern St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. In 1515 the Abbey leased it out and the document called it "a garden called Covent Garden." By 1540 the monks were gone, the garden was crown property, and a piece of London was about to begin its strangest transformation.

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Image: Calton | CC BY 2.5

Covent Garden: Inigo Jones Builds a Square

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve Cadman, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1630 Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, paid Charles I £2,000 for a licence to build "as many new houses on his land as he shall thinke fitt." The king had grown irritated by the dilapidated state of Long Acre and used the situation to extract a fee from the wealthy. Russel...

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Image: Steve Cadman | CC BY-SA 2.0

Covent Garden: The Casual Market

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mattblack82, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1654 something less elegant had appeared. Traders had set up wooden stalls against the garden wall of Bedford House, selling produce informally. The wealthy residents began to leave. In 1670 Charles II granted the Earl of Bedford a charter to hold a market every day except Sun...

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Image: Mattblack82 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Covent Garden: Harris's List

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greater London UK location map.svg Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data derivative work: ויקיג'אנקי, CC BY-SA 3.0. The eighteenth century turned Covent Garden into a notorious red-light district, the central hub of London's sex trade. Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published annually from the 1750s, was a directory of prostitutes with descriptions of their appearance, location, and pr...

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Image: Greater London UK location map.svg Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data derivative work: ויקיג'אנקי | CC BY-SA 3.0

Covent Garden: The Move to Nine Elms

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Covent_Garden_from_the_Ralph_Agas_1572_map_of_London.jpg: *Civitas_Londinium_or_The_Agas_Map_of_London.jpg: Mike Calder, image of Civitas Londinium, Agas' Map of London, c. 1570-1605 derivative work: SilkTork (talk) derivative work: SilkTork (talk), Public domain. By the 1960s the market had outgrown its home. The streets could not handle the lorries. Lorries could not handle the streets. Redevelopment of the whole estate was proposed, and most of the historic buildings around the square would have been flattened. In 1973 the Covent Garden...

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Image: Covent_Garden_from_the_Ralph_Agas_1572_map_of_London.jpg: *Civitas_Londinium_or_The_Agas_Map_of_London.jpg: Mike Calder, image of Civitas Londinium, Agas' Map of London, c. 1570-1605 derivative work: SilkTork (talk) derivative work: SilkTork (talk) | Public domain

Covent Garden: Theatres and Pepys

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Royal_Opera_House-Covent_Garden-London.jpg: Yair Haklai derivative work: SilkTork (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Covent Garden has 13 theatres in a square mile. The Royal Opera House, originally Theatre Royal, was built here in 1732 for Edward Shepherd. Handel's first season of operas began the year after it opened. The current building dates to 1858, the third on the site after fires in 18...

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Image: Royal_Opera_House-Covent_Garden-London.jpg: Yair Haklai derivative work: SilkTork (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0