27 Southampton Street

Throughout history famous people lived all around the Piazza, particularly actors and dramatists, whose unsocial hours demanded they reside close to their work. The playwrights Wycherley, Congreve, and Richard Sheridan, and the great thespians Garrick, Charles Macklin, John Kemble, and Edmund Kean, as well as Nell Gwynne, were all local residents, although hardly a trace of their homes has survived. An exception is 27 Southampton Street, just off the south side of the Piazza, where David Garrick found it convenient to live within a short stroll of theatres from 1749 - 1772. He was manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, for nearly thirty years from 1747, and nearby Garrick Street and the Garrick Club are named after him. Theatregoers were more passionate in those days, and from time to time his home was besieged by angry mobs enraged by his productions.

Number 43 King Street

Now the oldest construction in the Piazza is in the northwest corner. The history of its occupancy mirrors the changing economic fortunes of Covent Garden. Originally until 1756 it was Lord Archer's substantial private mansion. Later it was rented to a peruke maker (wig maker), before it became the home of the new Royal Institute of Architects. Exclusive clubs followed but later it became the premises of George Monro a wholesale fruiterer and is now occupied by a small public relations company.

Covent Garden Market Building

Within 25 years of the completion of Inigo Jones’s noble square, as early as 1656, market traders had established their stalls in its open centre. This building, designed by Charles Fowler, was put up to provide a covered hall in 1830, and until 1974 it remained the primary fruit and vegetable market for London. The whole Covent Garden market was steeped in its atmosphere. In the early morning hours, lorries pregnant with ripe produce rumbled in from the countryside to crowd the narrow thoroughfares. Boxes of fruit and vegetables and flowers were piled high on the cobbles, and on the heads of the porters, both male and female, who fetched them to the stalls. Teashops did a brisk trade all night, and pubs opened at dawn for thirsty porters and drivers. You can still see the market regulations painted on large boards in the entrances to the Central Market Building.

Left empty in 1974, this structure was preserved and renovated by the Greater London Council, and reopened in 1980 as a complex of shops, boutiques, and open-air restaurants. This redevelopment sparked the regeneration of the entire area.

Although the area over the years it has still retained its exciting, bustling ambience. This now comes from tourists and the many street entertainers and events - musicians, clowns, dance and special exhibitions. These are staged in the west Piazza and also under cover in the north hall of Central Market Building where up to one million people per week pass though or around.

The Jubilee Hall

This is where our story started, but as the area became posh again, the market traders were generally expected to leave. However in the Jubilee Hall today, a busy traditional market still flourishes in the covered space beneath the new building on the south side of the Piazza. It spills out onto the pavement underneath the glass portico of the adjacent baroque Jubilee Hall, built in 1904.Millions of people pass through every year buying original and traditional crafts and goods.