Covent Garden Market Building

Covent Garden Market in London is a historic 1830 glass-and-iron arcade built on England's first public square, commissioned in the 1630s by the Earl of Bedford. Originally monastery farmland in 1200, it transformed into London's main fruit and vegetable market after 1666. Today, the Covent Garden Area Trust maintains the market halls by paying a symbolic annual rent of one red apple and a posy of flowers.

London Β· from the walk β€œLondon's Best-Kept Secrets” Β· audio ~3 min Β· Generated

Covent Garden Market, The Piazza, London WC2E 8BE

What symbolic yearly rent is paid for the historic buildings of Covent Garden Market?

Take a look around you. This elegant iron and glass building... this is Covent Garden Market. And its story stretches back over Eight centuries.......... The first historical record of this place dates to the year twelve hundred, when it was nothing but open fields owned by Westminster Abbey, referred to as "the garden of the Abbey and Convent" β€” and That is where the name Covent Garden comes from. A monk's vegetable patch.......... In fifteen forty, the land was granted to John Russell, first Earl of Bedford. And nearly a century later, with the support of King Charles the First, the fifth Earl commissioned the great architect Inigo Jones to create the First public square in England β€” right here. The Piazza was an Italian-style residential square, the first of its kind in London.......... But here's where things get... colorful. After the Great Fire of London in sixteen sixty-six, the entire square was given over to selling fresh fruit and vegetables, and Covent Garden became London's largest market. As wealthier residents moved away, coffee shops, taverns, boarding houses, and Turkish baths transformed the genteel atmosphere into a decidedly raffish one.......... And then came the brothels. London was a city rife with prostitution, and more than two thirds of its disorderly houses were concentrated right here β€” around Covent Garden and the Strand. So notorious was this area that it produced its Own bestseller. Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published annually from seventeen sixty to seventeen ninety-four, was a pocket-sized directory of prostitutes... selling roughly eight Thousand copies a year. And who was behind it? A tavern waiter at the Shakespeare's Head named Jack Harris, who styled himself "The Pimp General of All England."

...... Now, the building you see today came later. Charles Fowler was commissioned to design it, and he took a revolutionary approach β€” rather than making it look like a fairytale castle, he concentrated on making it fit for purpose. Though the Greco-Roman design seems rather ornate to us, in Victorian times it was considered quite plain when it was erected in eighteen thirty.......... In nineteen seventy-four, the fruit and vegetable market moved south to Nine Elms in Battersea. There were plans to demolish Everything β€” a council scheme proposed mass demolitions for a conference centre, hotels, and a sunken four-lane carriageway. But Londoners fought back... and won.......... And here's a detail most visitors never discover. The Covent Garden Area Trust pays a yearly rent of one red apple and a posy of flowers for Each of the buildings and market halls β€” reflecting the history of the area as a fruit and vegetable market. Every summer, there's an actual ceremony with a Town Crier marching through the Piazza!......... One more thing. If you look toward St Paul's Church over there... on the ninth of May, sixteen sixty-two, the diarist Samuel Pepys recorded seeing an Italian puppet play in Covent Garden, performed by Pietro Gimonde, otherwise known as Signor Bologna. That date is traditionally reckoned as Mr. Punch's UK birthday β€” making This spot the birthplace of Punch and Judy in England. From monks' cabbages to puppet shows to the world's most scandalous guidebook... Covent Garden has Always known how to put on a show.

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