Cotton’s Wharf, Bridge yard passage, Southwark.†
Covely’s alley, Grey Eagle street, Spitalfields.†
Covent Garden, received its name from its being formerly a garden belonging to the Abbot and Monks of the convent of Westminster, whence it was called Convent Garden, of which the present name is a corruption. At the dissolution of religious houses it fell to the Crown, and was given first to Edward Duke of Somerset; but soon after, upon his attainder, it reverted again to the Crown, and Edward VI. granted it in 1552 to John Earl of Bedford, together with a field, named the Seven Acres, which being now built into a street, is from its length called Long Acre.
Covent Garden would have been without dispute one of the finest squares in Europe, had it been finished on the plan designed for it, by that excellent architect Inigo Jones. The piazza is grand and noble; besides the convenience of walking dry under it in wet weather, the superstructure it supports is light and elegant. In the middle is a handsome column supporting four sun dials, and on the west side of the square, is the church, erected by Inigo Jones, and esteemed by the best judges one of the most simple, and at the same time most perfect pieces of architecture, that the art of man can produce. But the market before it diminishes the beauty of the square.
Covent Garden Church, was erected in the year 1640, as a chapel of ease to St. Martin’s in the Fields, at the expence of Francis Earl of Bedford, for the convenience of his tenants, who were then vastly increased.
This church is remarkable for its majestic simplicity, and the gates on each side are suitable to the structure and very elegant. This church never fails to attract the eye of the most incurious, and, as we observed before, if Inigo Jones’s original design had been compleated, it would have had a most noble effect.
Covent Garden.
In 1645, the precinct of Covent Garden was separated from St. Martin’s, and constituted an independent parish, which was confirmed after the restoration in 1660, by the appellation of St. Paul’s Covent Garden, when the patronage was vested in the Earl of Bedford: and as it escaped the fire in 1666, which did not reach so far, it remains as it came from the hands of the great architect.
In the front is a plain, but noble portico of the Tuscan order, executed in the most masterly manner; the columns are massy, and the intercolumniation large, which has an air of noble simplicity, that if compared with the most ornamented Gothic structures, shews the superiority of the Roman architecture in its plainest form, over the finest barbarism. The building, tho’ as plain as possible, is happily proportioned; the walls are of brick covered with plaister, and the corners of stone; the roof is flat, and though of great extent, is supported by the walls alone, without columns. The pavement is stone; the windows are of the Tuscan form like the portico, and the altar piece is adorned with eight fluted columns of the Corinthian order, painted in imitation of porphyry. But this by some is thought a defect, the lightness of the altar piece in their opinion giving the church an air of heaviness.