Talk:Covent Garden
From Academic Kids
If it was a Convent's Garden, why was it owned by the Church of England? Convents are Catholic. -Adrian
Covent Garden was the name given, during the reign of King John (1199 - 1256), to a 40 acre patch in the county of Middlesex, bordered west and east by which is now St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane, and north and south By Floral Street and a line drawn from Chandos Place, along Maiden Lane and Exeter Street to the Aldwych.
In this quadrangle the Abbey or Convent of St Peter, Westminster, maintained a large kitchen garden throughout the Middle Ages to provide its daily food. Over the next three centuries, the monks old "convent garden" became a major source of fruit and vegetables in London and was managed by a succession of leaseholders by grant from the Abbot of Westminster.
These type of leases did eventually lead to property disputes throughout the kingdom, which the monarch King Henry VIII solved in 1540 by the stroke of a pen when he dissolved the monasteries and appropriated their land. Prior to this England was Catholic.
King Henry VIII granted the land to John Baron Russell, Great Admiral of England, and later the first Earl of Bedford. In fulfilment of his father's dying wish, King Edward VI, bestowed the remainder of the convent garden in 1547 to his maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset who began building Somerset House on the South side of the Strand the next year. When he was beheaded for treason in 1552, the land came once again into royal gift, and was awarded four months later to one of those who had contributed to Seymour's downfall. Forty acres, known as "le Covent Garden" plus "the long acre", were granted by royal patent in perpetuity to John Russell, the first Earl of Bedford.
So I guess it is a simplification to say it was owned by the Church of England. - Laurence
The boundary of Covent Garden extends up to New Oxford Street, Westward to Seven Dials, Eastwards to Kingsway and Southbound to Strand.
The article dwells on the tourist and (near-sanitised) heritage aspects but fails to give an overall picture of the locale. Historically it was notorious for it's crime and deprivation. Currently there are two large homeless hostels are situated within Covent Garden and another few situated nearby.
