Westminster Convent Garden

London Poster 24" x 36" $6.99 Unframed

Sir Walter Besant, in The Fascination of London, published in 1903, continues his survey of the Strand district with a mention of Westminster Convent Garden:

The name Covent in 'Covent Garden' is a corruption of Convent, and is taken from the convent garden of the Abbey of Westminster, which was formerly on this site. It was written Covent, as taken from the French couvent more immediately than the Latin conventus.

At the dissolution of the monasteries, Westminster Convent Garden became Crown property. In the first year of his reign Edward VI granted it to the Duke of Somerset. On the fall of that nobleman it reverted to the Crown, and in 1552 was granted to the Earl of Bedford with "seven acres, called Long Acre." The Earl of Bedford built a town-house on his newly acquired property, and devoted himself to the improvement of the neighbourhood.

Though the parish is so small, it is full of interesting associations, chiefly of the last two centuries. Wits, actors, literary men, and artists, frequented its taverns and swarmed in its precincts. The contrast between its earlier days, when it was a quiet retreat where the monks slowly paced beneath the sheltering trees, and its later vicissitudes, when the eighteenth-century roisterers and gamesters made merry within its taverns, could hardly be more striking.

Next: The Strand District: Covent Garden Piazza