Covent Garden

“The plate represents Covent-Garden Market during the bustle of an election for Westminster; the hustings are erected in the front of the church of St. Paul, which was built about the year 1650, as a chapel of ease to St. Martin's in the Fields. 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.... it continued as it came from the hands of its great architect, Inigo Jones, till the year 1795-6, when it was considerably injured by fire, but was immediately repaired.

It is in the form of a market-house, with a portico at both ends. The portico has no ornaments but the extremities of the joists, supporting the roof, which jut out in the manner of a pediment. The beams under this pediment form a horizontal roof, supported by columns of the Doric order.

....Covent-Garden received its name from having formerly been a garden belonging to the abbot and monks of the Convent of Westminster, whence it was called Convent-Garden, of which its present name is a corruption. The fruit and vegetable market certainly diminishes the beauty and effect of this place as a square, but perhaps the world does not furnish an instance of another metropolis supplied with these articles in equal goodness and profusion. It has been calculated that there are ten thousand acres of ground in the neighbourhood of London cultivated for vegetables, and about four thousand acres for fruit.

....The limits of our miscellany will not admit of doing adequate justice to the different groups in this picture. We shall only observe, that Mr. Rowlandson appears to have been quite at home. The architectural dignity of the church is well preserved by Mr. Pugin; who to be sure cannot help the appearance of the steeple, which seems to rise upon the sharp ridge of the roof: it is so in the original, and could not therefore by otherwise in the copy.

In the year 1799, Mr. Harris expended 25,000l. in the entire alteration of the interior and exterior parts of Covent-Garden House, which rendered it a new theatre; a title which it also assumed when Mr. King was first deputy-manager of Drury-Lane. The amphitheatre is entirely new, and contains three circles of boxes and a spacious gallery: the form is that of a truncated ellipse, or an egg flattened on one end; the effect of which upon the stage, and upon the sound (not always to be determined by rules), is certainly good. ....There are no columns or visible supporters to the boxes, it being justly imagined they they intercepted the sight; yet to the people in the pit, those rows of boxes full of company, having no apparent support, are apt to give an unpleasant sensation.

....The whole of the avenues to the theatre have been much altered and improved. The principal entrance is in Bow-street, under an antique Doric portico, through a large and spacious saloon, handsomely fitted up and warmed by stoves, leading to the lower circle of boxes, and to a double staircase that leads to the upper circles.

In consequence of the great expence attending the improvements of this house, Mr. Harris was obliged to raise the prices to a level with those taken by the Drury-Lane company. This circumstance, added to the want of a shilling gallery, had so prejudicial an effect in the first instance, that the performance on the night of opening, September 17, 1792, was rendered one scene of discontent and confusion, neither play nor farce being properly finished.”