The story of Covent Garden begins with its name, a worn-down version of "convent garden". In the Middle Ages the land was walled arable ground and orchard belonging to Westminster Abbey, supplying the monks with fruit and vegetables. After the dissolution of the monasteries the land passed to the Earls of Bedford, and it was the Bedford family who shaped what came next and set the pattern that still defines the area today.
The first planned square
In the 1630s the fourth Earl of Bedford commissioned the architect Inigo Jones to lay out a grand square on the site. The result was the Piazza, the first formally planned square in London and the model for the many that followed across the growing city. Its arcaded houses, inspired by Italian and French planning, were among the most fashionable addresses in London for a time. On the west side Jones built a church to close the vista, a plain but dignified building that survives to this day.
To walk through Covent Garden is to move through several centuries of London at once: a Stuart square, a Georgian market hall and a modern cultural quarter, all on the same ground.
The Actors' Church
St Paul's Church has been so long associated with the theatre that it is known as the Actors' Church. Its walls carry memorials to generations of performers, and its garden offers one of the quietest corners in the whole district, a few steps from the noise of the Piazza. The link between the church, the square and the stage is one of the threads that runs through the area's entire history, from the first theatres of the seventeenth century to the West End of today.
The great market
What began as an elegant residential square soon changed character. A fruit, vegetable and flower market grew up in the centre from the seventeenth century, informal at first and then permanent. As trade expanded, the central market building designed by Charles Fowler opened in 1830, its handsome halls giving the crowded market a proper home. For generations Covent Garden meant produce: barrows, porters, early mornings and the smell of flowers, a working heart of London captured in paintings, photographs and later in film. The market's life spilled into the surrounding taverns and coffee houses, many of which kept market hours.
Saving the Piazza
By the twentieth century the market had outgrown its site. The congestion of lorries in narrow streets became impossible, and in 1974 the wholesale trade moved south of the river to a new market at Nine Elms. The old buildings faced demolition, and there were real plans to clear much of the area for redevelopment. A determined local campaign saved them, and the restored market halls reopened in 1980 in a new role, as a place for shopping, eating and culture rather than wholesale trade. It was one of the more important conservation victories in modern London.
Covent Garden today
The result is a district that carries its history in plain sight. The Piazza still follows Inigo Jones's plan, the market halls still stand, and the streets around them keep the tight pattern laid down centuries ago. Street performance continues under a tradition of licensed pitches that reaches back into the area's past, the theatres draw audiences as they have for generations, and the shops and restaurants fill buildings that once held the produce trade. Few parts of London wear their past so openly, which is part of why Covent Garden remains one of the most visited quarters in the city.