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| Getting ready for the BAFTAs at the Royal Opera House by Lis Watkins |
Key meeting points and
times:
11 am Meet in front of the church, St Paul’s, Covent Garden,
on the market and piazza side (see photo above)
1pm Meet
in the churchyard by the door at the back of the same church (see photo below)
3.30 pm Finish at Neal’s Yard (NB not the modern
Thomas Neal shopping arcade). See photo
and directions below.
These locations have
some shelter if the weather is wet.
Brace yourself to face
the crowds, in December Urban Sketchers London visits Covent
Garden. But Covent Garden has more than shopping to offer. Options for drawing include:
- Covent Garden’s Victorian market buildings: the central
market, the Jubilee Hall Market, and the Floral Hall
- St
Paul’s
Church – the actors’ church – designed by Inigo Jones, with churchyard
behind
- Theatreland, including the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane,
and Royal Opera House
- The London Transport
Museum (admission
charge)
- Shops and stalls, with seasonal
decorations.
The area known as Covent Garden was originally arable land and orchards belonging
to Westminster Abbey – the convent garden.
With the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII
(1540), the land passed to the Dukes of Bedford. In 1630, the fourth Duke brought in architect
Inigo Jones to develop the area. Inigo
Jones designed the church which is there now, St Paul’s, with a Tuscan-style
portico, and laid out a piazza in the Italian style – unprecedented urban
design for England at that time – with elegant houses around it.
For centuries this was
a residential and commercial area of varying degrees of respectability, and
associated with the arts. The earliest
theatres were the Theatre Royal, Drury
Lane, and what is now the Royal Opera House on Bow Street. The church is known as the actors’ church and
has memorials to many famous names. In
the eighteenth century, writers such as Sheridan, Dryden and Aphra Behn, met in
the area’s coffee shops, and the artist J M W Turner grew up on Maiden Lane where
his father ran a barber’s shop.
Since the seventeenth
century, the piazza was also used for fruit and vegetable markets, and to bring
some order to this, in 1833 the covered central market building was designed. This continued as London’s main wholesale fruit and vegetable
market until 1974, when it moved south of the river to Nine Elms. After a campaign against demolition, the
market was re-opened to house the kind of shops and stalls we see today. There are some old photographs displayed on
walls inside the market building.
Places to draw which
may be slightly quieter include the churchyard behind the church which has
plenty of seats, the church interior, and the old streets and courtyards
further away from the main piazza. There
are plenty of arcades and market buildings if the weather is wet, as long as
you are dressed warmly.
There are plenty of
cafes and bars, and public toilets near the church. We will start the day in front of the church,
and end the day at Neal’s Yard. To get
to Neal’s Yard, with Covent Garden tube station behind you, walk up Neal
Street, turn left into Short’s Gardens and then right down a path next to the
Benefits shop, signed above with a barrel.
This day is run by Jo Dungey
Let's draw Covent Garden Saturday 10th December 2016
Celebrating 10 years of Urban Sketchers London
