Covent Garden

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Address:: Covent Garden,
London
Website:: www.coventgardenlondonuk.com
Buses:: 1 6 8 9 11 13 15 192324 25 29 38 55 59 68 87 91 98 139 168 172 177 189 243 253 521RV1X68
Trains:: Charing Cross BK NR, Covent Garden PC, Embankment BK CR DS NR, Holborn CN PC, Leicester Square NR PC, Temple CR DSNote: The nearest station to Covent Garden is Covent Garden. We can help plan your journey from Waterloo, King’s Cross and many other stations
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^{Covent Garden Piazza} Covent Garden Market in London

^{Covent Garden Market, London} Interior of the old Covent Garden Market

^{Old Covent Garden Market}

Did you know… The first recorded mention of a Punch and Judy show in England was at Covent Garden in 1662, by the diarist Samuel Pepys.

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Covent Garden was designed by Inigo Jones in the 1630s. A small fruit and veg market was added in 1670, and became the longest running food fair in London.

Covent Garden Market

Covent Garden was not always the pleasant place that you see today – prisoners were dragged down the track on their way to be hanged at Tyburn. The area around St. Giles was the site of London’s first leprosy hospital, and it was here that the Great Plague took hold in 1665.

During Victorian times, Covent Garden was known as the city’s worst slum – a fact attested to by Dickens in his numerous novels.

The site was acquired by Henry VIII in the mid 16th-century. It was originally owned by the monks at Westminster Abbey, as a place to grow their vegetables. But when he scrapped the monasteries in 1536, he also grabbed their land. When Charles I came to power in 1625, he granted the Earl of Bedford a licence to build, and hired Inigo Jones to create a piazza.

Jones’s classical designs were rather wasted in 1670, when a fruit and veg market settled in the square. It expanded rapidly, attracting more and more vendors to the area – and changed forever Covent Garden’s make-up. Out went the wealthy nobles—moved to better premises in St. James’s and Whitehall—and in came the lowly street traders.

Covent Garden Piazza, and Bow Street Runners

With the influx of street traders came the brothels, crime and undesirables. The authorities soon came up with a novel solution – the Bow Street Runners.

The Bow Street Runners were established in 1751 to tackle rising crime. This voluntary group ran in opposition to the constables, who were rumoured to be in collusion with the criminals. They were disbanded in 1839, ten years after the creation of the Metropolitan Police Force.

A stunning new market hall was added in the early 19th-century (what we now call the Piazza), and contains small shops, stalls and the Punch and Judy pub.

The ground outside is now permanently filled with buskers, acrobats, mimes and various other kinds of street entertainment.

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Drummerboy’s blog – Covent Garden

Drummerboy – “When people think about Covent Garden they think of buskers. They think of mimes and fire-eaters, jugglers and hairy students strumming James Blunt songs. But when I went there today there was no entertainment at all. Nothing! Zip. All they had was two little opera singers down in the basement singing to a load of empty seats. No clowns, no stilt-walkers, no Punch and Judy show. What is going on with the world? I had to make my own entertainment and look around the shops instead… continued.”