Covent Garden

Covent Garden, the well-known fruit, flower, and vegetable market lying to the north of the Strand, takes its name from the fact of its once having been a convent garden belonging to the Abbot of Westminster. The piazza was built by Inigo Jones in 1631, and in the seventeenth-century was a place of fashionable resort often mentioned in the writings of the time. It was not till 1656 that the practice of holding a market there began to grow up. The market and the streets leading to it are a sight worth seeing early on a summer morning. St. Paul's church, which lies to the W., was burnt-down in 1795.