CHAPTER VI
Covent Garden Market
In 1926 the Town Clerk of Westminster
presented a sixty-page report to the City
Council upon the subject of Covent Garden
Market, the owners of which were then proposing to remove it to a more suitable site. (ref. 1) The
history of the market, he concluded, 'bristles with
illegality, fraud and oppression'. The powers by
which the market was regulated had been 'obtained by none too creditable means', and the
owners had 'thereby established a stranglehold
on a large proportion of the fruit and vegetable
trade of London'. They levied 'an unjust tribute
on a substantial proportion of the food of the
people' by means of tolls imposed on traders who
had built up a vast world-wide business 'to which
the owners of the Market have in no way contributed either by their efforts or by risking their
money'. (ref. 2)
The Town Clerk's attitude reflected the long
prevalent hostility of public opinion towards the
private ownership of markets. In 1926 Covent
Garden Market was (with one exception (fn. a) ) the
only great wholesale food market in London still
in private hands. The Dukes of Bedford had
owned it until 1918, but during the previous half
century they had had increasing difficulty in providing for its ever growing requirements. As
early as 1867 the Duke's agents had been 'at their
wits' ends about "room, room", being made a
leading cry of public opinion'. (ref. 3) They had greatly
enlarged the area of the market and (despite the
Town Clerk's assertions to the contrary) spent
large sums on improvements as well as drawing a
handsome revenue. But still successive Dukes had
been unable to satisfy the inexorable voracity of
the fungoid Frankenstein's monster which they
had inherited. They were fully conscious of the
anomaly of private ownership of a great food
market, but their offers, made in 1882–3, to sell
the market to a public authority had been rejected
by both the City Corporation and the Metropolitan Board of Works. (ref. 4) In 1891 a Royal Commission had urged that local authorities should
be empowered to buy privately owned markets, (ref. 5)
but no legislation had implemented this recommendation, and a tract written in the same year
for the Fabian Society by Sidney Webb had
denounced the Duke of Bedford's income from
the market as 'an utterly unjustifiable tax on the
food of the people' (ref. 6) —a slogan which later became
so generally accepted that the Town Clerk of
Westminster could incorporate it almost verbatim in his report on the market some thirty
years later.
In this dilemma, possessed of a lucrative but
increasingly unpopular property the complex
requirements of which, particularly in such matters
as external communications, control of traffic and
prevention of fire, no private individual could
ever satisfy, yet which no public local authority
would buy, the eleventh Duke of Bedford at last,
in 1914, entered into a contract to sell the market
and surrounding property to Sir Joseph Beecham.
Sir Joseph died in 1916 before the purchase had
been completed, and the sale was eventually made
in 1918 to the Covent Garden Estate Company
Limited, a private company of which Sir Joseph's
two sons, Sir Thomas, the musician, and Henry,
were directors. Thus, at a time when the interminable problems of London's other great wholesale vegetable mart were about to be resolved by
the purchase of Spitalfields Market by the City
Corporation in 1920, the continued private
ownership of Covent Garden Market received a
new lease of life. It was not until 1962 that this,
'the principal national market in the United
Kingdom', was vested in the public ownership of
the Covent Garden Market Authority, (ref. 7) and the
resolution of its problems could be attempted with
some hope of success.
The first known reference to the market occurs
in 1654, when Thomas Cotton was described as
living 'about the new market in Covent Garden'. (ref. 8)
The picture reproduced on Plate 11 shows that
wooden rails had been erected round the Piazza
and that a few small groups of traders with baskets,
trestles and a cart were already congregating on
the south side outside the rails. In the centre of
the Piazza the picture shows a small tree surrounded by benches; in 1656–7 the churchwardens paid 3s. for painting 'the Benches and
seates in the Markett place'. (ref. 9) Ten years later
they paid 3s. 'For digging up the roote of the old
tree in the broad place', (ref. 10) which makes it possible
to date this picture as anterior to 1666–7. The
square was already becoming a place of popular
concourse—Pepys records having visited an Italian
puppet play there in 1662, 'the best that ever I
saw, and great resort of gallants'. (ref. 11)
(fn. b) In 1668–9
the churchwardens were concerned in the erection of a column in the centre of the Piazza (see
page 79).
By 1667 the volume of business transacted on
the south side of the Piazza was generating so much
'great ffylth' that it attracted the attention of the
Commissioners for Highways and Sewers who
met at the Office of the King's Works in Scotland Yard. The fifth Earl of Bedford, on being
'desired to finde some expedient to remove the
same', proposed to build shops beside the garden
wall of Bedford House, and prepared a plan which
was approved by the Commissioners. (ref. 13) It is clear,
however, that the shops were not built until ten
years later.
The little gathering of buyers and sellers on the
south side of the Piazza was still not, in strict law,
a market at all, (ref. 14) and for this reason the Earl of
Bedford derived no revenue from it. In the
seventeenth century markets were usually established by a grant of letters patent on the authority
of the royal prerogative, and on 12 May 1670 the
Earl obtained such a grant. He and his heirs were
authorized to hold for ever a market in the Piazza
on every day in the year except Sundays and
Christmas Day for the buying and selling of all
manner of fruit, flowers, roots and herbs, together
with all liberties and free customs, tolls, stallage,
pickage, and all other profits and emoluments to
such market in any way belonging, or with the
same used, held, or enjoyed. (ref. 15)
This grant is the founding charter of Covent
Garden Market. It was written in Latin and was
phrased in the same loose terms as the charters of
other markets established at this period—so
vaguely, indeed, that in 1817 even the owner's
very right to levy tolls was challenged in the
courts. (ref. 16) But there was one important difference
in the wording of the Covent Garden charter.
Whereas in other grants the area in which the
market franchise might be exercised was only
vaguely indicated, (fn. c) the area at Covent Garden
was most precisely defined as extending over the
whole of the Piazza—420 feet eastward from
St. Paul's Church and 316 feet northward from
the garden wall of Bedford House, and no more.
This precise definition of area was to have an
important bearing on the future history of the
market, but quite apart from the terms of the grant
there were other peculiarities at Covent Garden
which help to explain why the market there survived when others (such as St. James's, Newport
and Lowndes Markets) declined into unregretted
extinction, and why Covent Garden eventually
achieved its modern supremacy. Perhaps most
important of all, the area of the Piazza was (with
the exception of Smithfield) more than twice as
large as the area of any other London market, and
so for well over a century there was no physical
obstacle to expansion. Only at Covent Garden
did the owner of the market franchise continue
to own almost all the surrounding land. Here the
market was a part of an efficiently managed estate
in the continuous ownership of one prodigiously
wealthy family. Neither the freehold of the site of
the market nor the freehold of the market franchise were ever sub-divided or separated from each
other (as they were in different ways, for instance,
at Spitalfields and Newport Markets), and even
the leasehold interest in the market franchise was
never granted away by the Dukes of Bedford for
more than comparatively short terms. This continued concentration of all proprietary interests in
and around the market was immensely important
in the history of Covent Garden. In the early
nineteenth century, when the market had extended over the whole of the Piazza and congestion first became a problem, the sixth Duke
was able, in 1828–30, to take direct control
of both its day-to-day and long-term management, and to provide it with what were then
model new buildings. Through their ownership of the surrounding ground later Dukes were
able, by the demolition of many buildings in the
adjoining streets, to extend the market far beyond
the area defined in the grant of 1670. By the end
of the nineteenth century, when successive Dukes
of Bedford had virtually completed these developments, Covent Garden had already achieved its
unique national position.
Nine months after the grant of 1670 the fifth
Earl of Bedford granted a lease of his market rights
—the first of a series extending down to 1827.
This first lease, dated 10 February 1670/1, was to
George Collop of Gray's Inn, esquire, and Sarah
Bennett of St. Paul's, widow, for seven years from
the previous Christmas, at a rent of £5 per annum.
It recited that although the royal letters patent
authorized the market to be held anywhere within
the Piazza, the Earl 'did not intend that the market
people should be at liberty to sit in any part thereof', and therefore stipulated that the lessees should
compel the market people to sit in two parallel
rows, one beside the garden wall of Bedford House
(which then formed the southern boundary of the
Piazza) and the other on the outer side of the rails.
A 'convenient way and passage' was to be left
between the two rows, carts were to stand at
either end, outside the rails, and the lessees
covenanted to clean the area occupied by the
market. In return they were to enjoy the liberties
and profits of the market, but there was no scale of
tolls, and they were presumably allowed to charge
whatever they could get. (ref. 18)
During the 1670's the trade of the market evidently increased very greatly, for in the next lease,
granted in December 1677 for twenty-one years
to Adam Pigott and James Allen, citizens and
cutlers of London, the annual rent was increased
from £5 to £80, and there was also a premium of
100 guineas. The lessees covenanted to pave and
repair the ground used for the market, and they
were now allowed, under stringent conditions, to
build permanent shops against the garden wall.
These shops were to form one uniform range not
more than eight feet wide; their roofs were to be
one foot lower than the top of the garden wall, and
chimneys were prohibited. (ref. 19) By July 1678 the
shops—twenty-two of them, and equipped with
cellars—had been erected; the flat roofs of two of
them which backed on to the two semi-circular
projections of Bedford House garden wall were
adorned with wooden rails 'for the more ornament'. In return for this outlay the lessees'
interest was extended to twenty-six years—the
longest term for which any of the Dukes of Bedford ever leased their market rights. (ref. 20)
When this lease expired in 1704 Bedford House
was about to be demolished and its site and garden
built over. The fronts of the houses to be erected
along the south side of the square (later known as
Tavistock Row) were to range along the line of
the old garden wall, and in order to provide space
for access to the houses the market shops had to be
removed to the area inside the rails of the Piazza.
In 1705–6 a row of forty-eight shops, brickbuilt with slate roofs, and many of them with
cellars, was erected parallel to and a few feet inside the rails on the south side of the Piazza
(Plates 26, 27). The shops were built by the second
Duke of Bedford, and cost nearly £1,200. (ref. 21)
(fn. d)
The market had now been recognized as a
valuable asset to the ducal revenues, and in order
to gain the full profit from its constant expansion
the Dukes of Bedford began in 1705 to lease their
market rights for only one year at a time. During
the years 1705–12 the rents ranged from £500 to
£800 per annum, and in 1708 and 1710 the
lessees also agreed to pay the Duke one eighth of
their profits as well. (ref. 22) Burdened with these
heavy charges the lessee was complaining that in
the last quarter of 1709 he had made a loss. (ref. 23)
By the unexacting standards of the time the
degree of control exercised by the ground landlord
in the first half of the eighteenth century was
probably stricter than in many other markets.
The Dukes of Bedford employed salaried agents
whose instructions the lessee covenanted to obey,
but both the pictures and engravings of the Piazza
reproduced on Plates 26, 27, 28 and documentary
records show that the number of shops, sheds and
removable stands was constantly increasing.
There were enlargements, encroachments, excavations for wells and boghouses, excavations
for more cellars, particularly for the potters who
were allowed to establish a crockery mart in this
supposedly exclusively fruit and vegetable market (ref. 24)
(Plate 26), and even the column in the centre
of the Piazza was debased for a few years by the
erection of a shanty which entirely enclosed its
lower half. (fn. e) It is evident, in fact, that by about
1740 the control exercised by the Dukes or their
agents had been greatly relaxed, and in 1741 the
fourth Duke was content to lease his rights for the
unusually long term of seven years at a rent of
£1,200 per annum—the highest yet to be obtained. (ref. 25)
The Duke's leases were granted by open competitive tender to the highest bidder, and at about
this time two unsuccessful tenderers complained
that they had been at a disadvantage because the
previous lessee had 'very cautiously concealed
from the Publick the Real Value of the Market'. (ref. 26)
The Duke perhaps felt that he too was in the dark,
so when the lease of 1741 unexpectedly reverted
to him three years later he inserted a covenant in
the new lease compelling the lessee to provide a
written statement of his income from the tolls and
the rents of the shops and standings. (ref. 27) Early in
1748 the vestry of St. Paul's presented to the
Duke a memorial signed by sixty-two inhabitants
complaining of 'the Nusances of the Market', (ref. 28)
and the way was now open for one of those periodic
renovations which have characterized the history
of Covent Garden.
The inhabitants complained that for some years
past many of the shops, sheds and stalls had
'Contrary to Originall Usage' been occupied by
'Bakers, Haberdashers, Cook Shops, Retailers of
Geneva and Other Spiritous Liquors, and Sundry
other Trades', and that this 'could never be Intended by Your Grace to be permitted in an
Herb-Markett such as Covent Garden Markett
Originally was'. Some of the new stands had
been erected outside the rails, thereby greatly
obstructing the streets surrounding the Piazza,
and many of the occupiers of the shops had converted their lofts into bed chambers, whereby
'divers persons have … become Burdensome and
Chargable to the parish'. The 'stench and filth
of the Markett, the Offensive Smoke of the
Chimneys of the said several Sheds and the Disturbances which frequently happen, by the great
Number of profligate and Disorderly people, who
frequent the Square, and particularly that part
of it called Irish Row', were all great annoyances
to the inhabitants living round the market. The
leasehold value of their houses had 'Abated in
proportion as the Nusances have Encreased, and
… sundry Houses in the parish are let to persons
of Ill fame and others remain untenanted through
the decay of trade.' For all these reasons they
humbly requested the Duke to take steps for
'reviving the Decayed Credit of the parish and
restoring it to its pristine flourishing State'. (ref. 28)
This petition was favourably received, (ref. 29) and in
1748 the Duke spent nearly £4,000 in rebuilding
or repairing the market shops and sheds. (ref. 30)
(fn. f) The
new buildings had low-pitched or slightly curved
roofs, from which low chimneys were allowed to
project, and their appearance recalls the converted railway carriages sometimes to be seen in
modern shanty towns (Plate 29). Nevertheless
the appearance of the market must have been
greatly improved, at least for a while, and as an
earnest of stricter control the lease of the market
granted by the Duke in September 1748 contained a schedule of the rents and tolls which the
lessee was entitled to collect. The lease shows that
there were now 106 shops and 229 stands; the
rent-charge had declined slightly to £1,170 per
annum. (ref. 31)
During the second half of the eighteenth century the market continued to grow, and by 1798
the lessees were paying a rent of £2,500 per
annum. (ref. 32) The rate of growth of the potato trade
was particularly rapid, it being estimated that in
1819 the consumption of potatoes had increased
ten-fold during the previous sixty years. (ref. 33)
(fn. g)
There were occasional complaints from the vestry, usually about cleansing or obstruction, (ref. 35) and
in 1781 the lessee of the market attended a meeting
of the vestry to discuss their grievances. He
promised that in future 'No Exhibition of Wild
Beasts or other Shews' would be permitted, and,
he sadly continued, 'The Mountebank has orders
to quit but it will be a loss of about Ten Guineas
a year in case he is removed. If he should be
permitted to stay, he promises the shed shall be
always taken down so soon as he has done his
business, and put into a Cellar.' (ref. 36) 'Other Shews'
did not, of course, include parliamentary elections, and polling for the two members for
Westminster continued to be held at the hustings
erected in front of St. Paul's Church from at least
1701 until 1868, the last general election before
the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872.
Nor could the Dukes of Bedford prevent Covent
Garden becoming, in the words of a contemporary writing in 1776, 'the great square of Venus
… One would imagine that all the prostitutes in
the Kingdom had pitched upon this blessed
neighbourhood for a place of general rendezvous.
For here are lewd women in sufficient numbers to
people a mighty colony. And that a fuel for the
natural flame may not be wanting, here is a great
variety of open houses whose principal employment is to minister incitements to lust.' (ref. 37) And
here in 1763, beneath the portico houses, James
Boswell 'sauntered up and down for a while in a
sort of trembling suspense' as he waited for his
inamorata of the hour. (ref. 38)
In the latter part of the eighteenth century
Covent Garden had become 'the greatest market
in England for herbs, fruit and flowers'. (ref. 39) It was
divided by customary usage into different sectors,
the herb shops and better-class fruiterers in the
south row and the florists on the west side. The
north side was devoted to roots and kitchengarden produce (except potatoes, which were on
the south side), the east to peas and beans or
cherries and strawberries according to the season,
while in the centre were the 'bird-sellers, dealers
in old iron, and large displays of crockery-ware'. (ref. 40)
By the early nineteenth century Covent Garden
was already the focal point of a highly diverse
trade. Within ten miles of London there were
15,000 acres of market garden ground, in which
up to 60,000 labourers were employed at certain
seasons. The growers loaded their carts at sunset
and between ten o'clock at night and one o'clock
in the morning they set out, often accompanied by
their wives. 'All the roads round London,
therefore, are covered with market-carts and
waggons during the night, so that they may reach
the markets by three, four, or five o'clock, when
the dealers attend.' By six or seven o'clock the
growers had sold their produce, which was then
dispersed to the retail shops 'by the aid of ill-paid
Irish women, who carry loads of a hundredweight to all parts of London on their heads'.
The fragile strawberry crop had to be carried into
the market as well as out of it, and hundreds of
women, many of whom had walked to London
from Shropshire or Wales for the soft fruit
season, were employed in this drudgery. Like an
army of moving caryatids they carried on their
heads basket-loads weighing up to fifty pounds, and
in the course of the three or four journeys a day
which they made from farm to market they often
walked thirty miles. (ref. 41)
Covent Garden Market had, in fact, become
too large and complex for it to be managed by
simply leasing the collection of the tolls to the
highest bidder. In 1812 the vestry of St. Paul's
complained to the sixth Duke that much of the
market was occupied by dealers in 'China and
other Crockery Ware, Poultry, Old Iron, and a
variety of articles not enumerated in the Grant', (ref. 42)
and that in consequence even the roadways round
the Piazza were 'occupied by the Stalls and Baskets
of those who cannot find Room within the Rails'.
The market was dirty, there had been constant
disputes about the tolls, and 'much ill-will and
litigation' had ensued. As a result the Duke's
lessee, 'conceiving he had not been paid his fair
Tolls', had refused to pay any more rent, and in
1813 the Duke had decided to promote an Act of
Parliament 'to ascertain and settle the Tolls'. (ref. 43)
As originally drafted the sixth Duke's Bill contained a schedule of the tolls to be charged in
future, and it therefore encountered considerable
opposition from the users of the market, particularly the growers, who claimed that it would
establish 'an exorbitant toll … and enhance the
price of all vegetables and fruits to the inhabitants
of London and Westminster'. At a public meeting
of market gardeners held at the Freemasons'
Tavern in Great Queen Street a committee was
formed to oppose the Bill, and the schedule of
tolls was in consequence withdrawn. In this
emasculated form the Bill received the royal assent
on 21 May 1813. (ref. 44)
This Act proved of very little value. There
were provisions for the removal of obstructions,
for the better cleaning of the market and for the
recovery of unpaid tolls, but so far as the actual
tolls were concerned the Act merely authorized
the Duke or his lessee to collect from the vendors
of goods 'all such Toll and Tolls as is or are usually
taken or collected within the said Market'. The
difficulty was that there was no uniform, generally
accepted scale of charges. Fresh litigation soon
ensued in which it emerged that the tolls varied
from one part of the market to another. The
legal position of the Duke or his lessees, as plaintiffs in court actions for the payment of tolls, was
much weakened by their continued toleration of
stall-holders not engaged in the fruit and vegetable
trade, and by the ambiguous wording of the original grant of 1670, which the courts held had
not been clarified by the Act of 1813. The right
to collect any tolls at all was even questioned in
1817, (ref. 45) and probably as a result of these uncertainties the highest rent which the Duke could
obtain for the lease of his market rights declined
from £2,900 to £2,500 per annum. (ref. 46) Meanwhile the volume of business had become so large
that it could no longer be restricted to the area
defined in the grant of 1670, and in 1825 the
Duke's lessee failed in an action to collect tolls for
goods sold in James Street. (ref. 47)
Figure 15:
Covent Garden Market, Central Avenue, sections
There were three causes for the unsatisfactory
state of the market at this time—uncertainty
about the tolls, inadequate management and uneconomical use of the space available. These
defects could only be remedied by another Act
of Parliament and at considerable expense to the
sixth Duke of Bedford. In 1826 an Act had
authorized the Commissioners of Woods and
Forests (who had been concerned in the formation of Regent Street) to buy land needed for
the widening of the Strand, (ref. 48) and in 1827 the
Duke had agreed with the Commissioners to sell
the required property for some £29,000. He
evidently decided to use this windfall for the
improvement of the market, (ref. 49) and in the winter
of 1827–8 he and his staff were considering the
various designs submitted by Charles Fowler,
the architect whom the Duke had selected for the
rebuilding. (ref. 50) Fowler's first proposals for the layout of the market were considerably altered at
the suggestion of Mr. Charlwood, the Duke's
clerk of the market, 'who was employed to
arrange the ground-plan, distribution, and appropriation of the different departments of the
market…', (ref. 51) while for the elevations the Duke
insisted on the acceptance of some of his own
ideas—notably the balustrade above the colonnades. (fn. h) Ultimately Fowler's early designs were
substantially modified.
In February 1828 a petition was presented to
the House of Commons for leave to bring in a
Bill 'for the Improvement and Regulation of
Covent Garden Market'. (ref. 53) The Bill met with
little opposition, for the requirements of the
market had evidently been closely studied,
and it received the royal assent on 27 June
1828. (ref. 54)
The Act (which repealed that of 1813)
authorized the sixth Duke to demolish the existing
buildings in the market and to erect new ones in
accordance with a ground plan attached to the
Act. This plan formed part of Fowler's designs.
It provided for three parallel ranges of buildings
containing shops, offices and cellars, and for the
rest of the ground to be divided into a network of
rectangular standings separated from each other
by footpaths and gangways, the use to which each
stand could be put being clearly marked on the
plan. The Act also authorized the Duke to build
'Terraces' at the east and west ends of the market,
but these do not appear on the plan and in fact only
one, at the east end, was erected (fig. 16).
The Duke's right to collect tolls was firmly
established. A schedule to the Act contained a
scale of the tolls which might be charged in the
different parts of the market known as the casual
cart stands (i.e., those let by the day), the yearly
cart stands, the potato stands, the fruit market, the
yearly pitching stands and the flower stands. The
rents which might be charged for each type of
stand were also precisely laid down, but those for
the shops, offices and cellars in the buildings
could be determined by the Duke as he should
see fit.
The Act also contained provisions for the dayto-day management of the market. The Duke
was empowered to make bye-laws, and (with
certain minor exceptions) nothing was to be sold
in the market but fruit, vegetables and flowers.
Waggons were only to be placed on the standings
provided for them, and obstructions placed in the
gangways of the market or in the surrounding
carriageways could be seized.
In June 1828 the last of the long series of leases
granted by successive Dukes of Bedford of their
market rights expired, (ref. 55) and for nearly a century
afterwards the market was managed by their own
paid employees. Rebuilding of the market began
in September 1828 and was completed in May
1830 (Plate 36a), William Cubitt of Gray's Inn
Road (brother of Thomas Cubitt, who had
recently developed much of the Dukes of Bedford's Bloomsbury estate), being the contractor.
His tender was for £34,850.
Figure 16:
Covent Garden Market in 1831, plan. Redrawn from a plan in The Gardener's Magazine, vol. vii, 1831
The Duke's outlay on rebuilding the market
amounted to some £61,000, which was very
considerably more than his advisers had expected. (ref. 56)
He had eventually received £32,793 from the
Commissioners of Woods and Forests for the sale
of his ground required for the improvements in
the Strand, and had therefore had to find the
balance from his own resources. Nevertheless this
outlay probably proved to be a good investment.
For some thirty years after 1830 no further
alterations were needed in the market, apart from
the erection in 1839–40 of a corrugated iron
covering (designed by Fowler) to protect the
flower stands at the west end (ref. 57) (Plate 37a); and
the seventh Duke's net profit in the year 1861
had risen to £6,752. (ref. 58) The three problems of the
market—uncertainty about the tolls, inadequate
management and uneconomical use of the space
available—were all for the time being resolved,
and a brief early Victorian heyday supervened
between the market's raffish, haphazard past and
the onset of new problems and new criticisms in
the 1860's. There was still a considerable volume
of retail trade, and the flower stands, the shops
of the centre arcade and the conservatories at the
east end in particular soon proved favourite resorts
for all classes of Londoners (Plate 37b). 'The
epicure may here feast his eyes with delight',
wrote a contemporary, 'and, if he is wealthy
enough, purchase the natural produce of April or
May while the snows of February are whitening
the ground.' Here 'Many a poor man has often
expended his shilling when he could ill spare it, to
purchase a choice tulip or dahlia, which he
treasured as the pride of his garden'; and here too,
intent on an unneeded bargain and titillated
perhaps by the rare opportunity to rub shoulders
with the 'lower orders' of that class-ridden age,
came 'the aristocratic lady, who treads with
"mincing gait" through the arcade, attended
by John the page, and all his "eruption of
buttons'". (ref. 59)
These halcyon days, when a visit to Covent
Garden in early summer was almost a part of the
London social season, were coming to an end in
the late 1850's. Congestion in the streets
approaching the market was the most urgent
problem, and in 1858 the seventh Duke of
Bedford sold some of his property in Long Acre,
Rose Street and King Street to the Metropolitan
Board of Works for the formation of a new
thoroughfare (now Garrick Street) from St.
Martin's Lane to King Street. From the proceeds of this sale—£20,892—the Duke made a
voluntary contribution of £15,000 to the Board
of Works in recognition of the benefit which his
estate in Covent Garden would receive from the
new street. Between 1856 and 1861 he also
spent £6,051 on a smaller street improvement of
his own, at the south-east corner of the market,
where he bought out the leaseholders of a number
of houses for an extension of Burleigh Street from
Exeter Street to Tavistock Street, and the formation of a covered passage on the east side of
Tavistock Court leading into the south-east
corner of the Piazza. (ref. 60)
During these years the seventh Duke and his
agent, Charles Parker, evidently became more
aware of both the new needs of the market and of
the new opportunities to enlarge the revenue from
it. In 1858–60 they installed gas lighting; when the
demolition of Hungerford Market for the formation of Charing Cross Station became imminent
they were concerned to enlarge the legitimate
business of Covent Garden by providing space in
Hart Street for warehouses for the displaced seed
merchants; and in order to provide more space in
the market itself, as well as to reduce drunkenness,
they gave notice to quit to the occupants of three
of the public houses there, and removed the
market superintendent's office to a house in an
adjoining street. Parker consulted the salesmen
about their requirements and even prepared a
model for the erection of an upper storey over the
existing buildings. (ref. 61)
There were also two new departures which were
to prove of paramount importance for the longterm future of the market. Firstly, in 1860, the
seventh Duke caused to be erected upon the vacant
site of the recently demolished Imperial Hotel at
the south-east corner of the Piazza a temporary
canvas-roofed structure for the accommodation
of some of the flower dealers for whom there was
not enough room in their allotted standings at the
west end of the market. This was the first time
that any Duke of Bedford had provided accommodation outside the area of the market as specifically designated by the original grant of 1670;
and although at first only temporary, the new
flower market at once became a permanency, for
in 1862–3 it was roofed with iron and enlarged
eastwards to take in two houses in Wellington
Street. (ref. 62)
Secondly, and at about the same time, the
Dukes of Bedford began to insert a new covenant
in leases granted to tenants who were concerned
in the fruit and vegetable trade and who wished
to store their goods in warehouses on any of the
Dukes' property in streets adjacent to the market.
The Dukes now insisted that besides the rent
tenants should also pay the same tolls on any goods
brought to their premises as they would have paid
if the goods had been brought into the area of the
charter market. (fn. i) The exact date of this innovation is not known, but the second example of it
was in 1862, when a potato merchant took over
the premises at No. 3 Maiden Lane recently
vacated by Messrs. Godfrey and Cooke, chemists,
and was obliged, in addition to his rent of £70, to
agree to pay tolls which the eighth Duke's agent
anticipated would yield another £50 per annum. (ref. 63)
Once the principle of using part of their land
around the original chartered area for the expansion of the market had been accepted, the
Dukes of Bedford could (as their tenants'
existing leases expired) enlarge the area of the
market over as much of their Covent Garden
estate as they pleased. By this means, for nearly
fifty years after 1860, it was possible for successive Dukes to cope with the relentless demands of
the market for more space, and by piecemeal
additions to double the total area of the market
under their direct control, as well as receiving
tolls from those tenants in the fruit and vegetable
business who rented their own premises in the
adjacent streets. (ref. 64)
In the late 1860's and early 1870's Covent
Garden and its noble owners became the objects
of frequent public criticisms which continued with
little intermission until the eleventh Duke sold
virtually the whole estate in 1918. These critics
ignored both the Dukes' difficulties and the
gigantic costs involved, and often contradicted
each other. Some said that enlargement on the
existing site was impossible, but the market could
not be allowed to 'remain as it is, because it happens
to belong to a powerful nobleman', and it should
therefore be removed to Seven Dials, where the
removal of the existing slums would 'purify the
social and moral atmosphere …' (ref. 65)
(fn. j) Others contended that the market should remain in Covent
Garden, 'but not with its present noble proprietor'
who should be 'with all due speed disestablished
and disendowed' in favour of the Metropolitan
Board of Works. (ref. 67) Even the market gardeners,
shopholders and salesmen who worked in the
market disagreed about what should be done;
they formed rival trade associations and committees, held public meetings and lobbied the
Duke. (ref. 68)
At last, in 1871, a start was made when a contract was placed by the eighth Duke's new steward,
Thomas Davison, with William Cubitt and
Company for the thorough renovation of the
buildings in the charter market at a cost of £9,694.
This at least proved uncontroversial, but when in
the same year the Duke decided to enlarge and
improve the Flower Market which had been
erected in 1860, Davison's consultations with the
market tradesmen evoked both eager support and
strenuous opposition. 'An influential body of
tenants' even threatened to remove their trade
elsewhere, (ref. 69) but the Duke persevered, and in
1871–2 a large new iron and glass Flower Market
was erected upon the site of the old one, now
enlarged by the addition of the back premises of
the Old Hummums Hotel and of a third house in
Wellington Street. With this enlarged eastern
frontage it was possible to erect a permanent
brick facade to Wellington Street, but at the
western end facing the Piazza there was as yet
only 'a structure of a temporary character'. The
building (Plate 43a, 43b) was constructed by
William Cubitt and Company to the designs of
one of their own staff, William Rogers, and cost
£17,710. (ref. 70) The opposition of the tenants
gradually subsided, and Davison reported that it
was 'not too much to hope that the wholesale
Flower trade of the Metropolis has been permanently re-established and attached to the
Duke's Covent Garden Estate so as to be moderately remunerative to the Duke, and satisfactory to the Tenants'. (ref. 69)
Davison also made other improvements. In
1872 barriers in Southampton Street and Burleigh
Street were removed, (ref. 71) and in the same year the
policing of the market, hitherto performed by
beadles in the Dukes' employment, was taken over
by the Metropolitan Police. One sergeant and
six constables were required; their annual wages
(paid by the Duke) amounted to £682. More
important was the gradual abatement of the
opposition of the shopkeepers and salesmen to the
roofing-in of the uncovered areas of the charter
market. (ref. 72) This opposition had been maintained
ever since roofing-in had first been mooted in
1858, (ref. 73) on the improbable grounds of danger
to health, while the market gardeners had as
consistently demanded protection for their goods. (ref. 74)
In 1871 Davison was able to resolve these difficulties; the shopkeepers and salesmen agreed to
acquiesce ('perhaps not too cordially in some
cases'), (ref. 75) and in 1874–5 an iron and glass roof
enclosing the whole of the area between the
Central Avenue and the southern range of buildings was erected by William Cubitt and Company
at a cost of £10,209 (ref. 76) (Plate 41a, b).
Davison died in 1877. His successor as steward,
John Bourne, at once reported to the ninth Duke
that the constantly increasing volume of business
was testing existing capacity to its utmost and that
'The great want of the General Market is more
space.' He considered and rejected the idea of
using the area underground beneath the Piazza
to win more room within the charter market and
instead he began to allow tenants engaged in the
fruit and vegetable trade who occupied premises
in the vicinity of the market to sell their goods
on these premises subject to their paying the same
tolls as would have been charged within the
chartered area. (ref. 77) He foresaw that in 1883 the
leases of a large block of the Duke's property on
the south side of the Piazza would expire, and
that this would provide an opportunity to enlarge
the market yet again. But before embarking on
the great capital expenditure which this would
involve the ninth Duke decided to offer to sell the
market to the Metropolitan Board of Works. In
correspondence which began in December 1882
he informed the Board of the impending opportunity for improvements and suggested that these
works 'should include Street widening and other
alterations that should properly be carried out
by Municipal Authority'. (ref. 78)
In adopting this course he may well have been
influenced by continuing public hostility towards
the existing régime at Covent Garden, against
which Punch at about this time had mounted a
prolonged campaign. 'Mud-Salad Market belongs to his Grace the Duke of Mudford'—so
began an article in August 1880 which, after
allowance is made for exaggeration, probably
presents a reasonable picture of the prevailing
conditions. 'Mud-Salad Market, like its own
vegetables, has now sprouted out in all directions.
You may start from Cabbage-leaf Corner, near
the site of Temple Bar, on a market-morning, and
may go as far as Turnip-top Square in Bloomsbury, or Cauliflower-place at Charing Cross, and
it is all Mud-Salad Market. Houses are barricaded with mountainous carts of green-stuff, cabs
lose themselves in vain attempts to drive through
the maze of vegetables, the costermonger makes
temporary gardens on the pathway, while the
roads are blocked with waggons, carts, donkeytrucks, and porters staggering under the weight
of huge baskets. Carrots, turnips, vegetablemarrows, potatoes, lettuces, and onions are
masters of the situation. Vegetable refuse, ankle
deep, carpets the pathway in every direction,
mixed with mud and rain-water, and trampled
into a pulpy slimy muck by thousands of hobnailed boots … It is not too much to say that
Mud-Salad Market is a disgrace to London, a
special disgrace to his Grace of Mudford, and
about the greatest nuisance ever permitted in a
great City of Nuisances.' (ref. 79)
After seven months' thought the Metropolitan
Board of Works decided not to buy the market. (fn. k)
So also in November 1883 did the City Corporation, to which the Duke had made a similar offer
after being rebuffed by the Board. (ref. 81) The price
to be paid was never discussed at all by either
authority; what was lacking was the will to
accept responsibility for a peculiarly intractable
problem, which the Duke of Bedford was now
left to solve for himself as best he might.
The next twenty years proved to be the greatest
period of expansion in the whole history of the
market. In 1884–5 six houses on the north side of
Tavistock Street and the Old Hummums Hotel
at the south-east corner of the Piazza were
demolished and a contract was placed with
William Cubitt and Company for the enlargement of the Flower Market over their site. (ref. 82)
This work included the erection of a permanent
western facade to the building in place of
the temporary one built in 1871–2, (ref. 83) and the
rebuilding of the covered passage along the
western end of the building; it was completed in
1887 at a cost of £31,856 (Plate 43c). (ref. 84) Simultaneously all the houses (some twenty-six) in the
block bounded by Tavistock Row, Tavistock
Court, Tavistock Street and Southampton Street
were demolished and the open space converted
into a temporary 'lay bye' (fn. l) for market vehicles. (ref. 85)
The cost of these works, which were not completed until 1891, was £15,709. (ref. 86)
Meanwhile Bourne was also arranging another
equally large extension in the north-east corner
of the market. After the destruction of Covent
Garden Theatre by fire in 1856 the manager,
Frederick Gye, had taken from the seventh Duke
of Bedford a lease of an extended site, and had
rebuilt the theatre upon the northern part of it.
Upon the southern portion he had fulfilled a longcherished ambition by the erection of a great iron
and glass hall with entrances in both Bow Street
and the north side of the Piazza (fn. m) (Plate 42b).
Gye had intended this building to be used as a
flower market, (ref. 87) and it was therefore called (very
confusingly, as events turned out) the Floral
Hall. But it had proved to be a complete failure
commercially and at last in 1887, when the leases
of several adjoining buildings had conveniently
expired, the ninth Duke of Bedford bought back
the lease from the tenant of the theatre (Gye now
being dead) for £20,000. (ref. 88) After buying out
several other properties he and Bourne were able
to clear away almost all the buildings in the
block bounded by the Floral Hall, Bow Street,
Russell Street and the Piazza. Only six houses
within this block remained, all at its south-east
corner, and among those demolished were the
Bedford and Russell Hotels and the offices of the
Strand Union Board of Guardians. (ref. 89) The Floral
Hall was at once converted into a foreign fruit
market, (ref. 90) and most of the rest of the cleared area
was left uncovered, to be used for loading and
unloading. (ref. 91) The total cost of this extension, including purchase of the Floral Hall, conversion
of the building, demolitions and road-works (not
completed till 1893) was £57,498. (ref. 89)
The fruit market had hitherto been held in the
north-eastern part of the charter market, between
the northern range of buildings and the Central
Avenue and under the cover of a wooden and
slated roof erected in 1828–30. This old roof
was now removed and part of it was re-erected as
a covering for the vacant ground at the north
corner of Russell Street and the Piazza, where it
still remains. At the same time, in 1888–9, an
iron and glass roof was built by William Cubitt
and Company over the whole length of the area
between the northern range of buildings in the
charter market and the Central Avenue. This
cost £7,288. (ref. 92)
The twenty-year period of expansion which
had begun in 1884 ended with the erection of the
Foreign Flower or Jubilee Market between
Tavistock Row and Tavistock Street in 1904 (ref. 93)
(Plate 47c) and yet another extension of the
Flower Market in 1904–5, at the south-west
corner of Russell and Wellington Streets, where
the upper floors were used as offices. (ref. 94) Both were
designed by Messrs. Lander, Bedells and Crompton. A number of temporary corrugated iron
coverings have also been erected over part of the
vacant ground between the Floral Hall and
Russell Street. Since the opening years of the
twentieth century there has been hardly any
further change in the outward aspect of the
market buildings (see Plate 39).
The Dukes of Bedford were, indeed, on the
horns of an intractable dilemma, and this is
probably why the eleventh Duke decided in the
early years of the twentieth century to call a halt
to the enlargement of the market area. Despite
all their efforts in the 1880's and 1890's, the
expansion of accommodation had always trailed
behind the expansion of trade. (ref. 95) Around 1880
the rapid outward growth of the suburbs of London was steadily driving the market gardeners
further out into the country, and more and more
goods were being brought to London by rail, instead of by cart, from distant parts of England.
These rail-transported goods arrived at all times
of the day and so greatly extended the working
hours of the wholesale market. In 1879 four
offices had to be provided in the market for the
accommodation of the railway companies, and in
this new age of the electric telegraph and the
telephone (the latter first introduced at Covent
Garden in 1886), the wholesale salesman was
rapidly replacing the grower and becoming an
increasingly important element in the market.
'It is not difficult to see', Bourne recorded in
1879, 'that a complete revolution will in time be
worked out in the method of conducting business.' (ref. 96)
It was in the 1880's and 1890's, too, that
imported foreign produce first arrived at Covent
Garden on a large scale. Between 1878 and 1884
the ninth Duke's market revenue rose by no less
than 41 per cent, largely through the growth of
foreign imports, of which American apples were
one of the most important items. Fear that the
inadequacy of the existing accommodation at
Covent Garden might result in the removal elsewhere of this lucrative new trade dictated the
decision to buy and convert the Floral Hall into
a foreign fruit exchange in 1887. (ref. 97) It was in
this new mart that bananas, Tasmanian apples,
Californian pears, (ref. 98) and early vegetables from
Madeira, the Canaries and the Channel Islands
were sold in ever increasing quantities during the
next few years. (ref. 99) With the introduction of cool
chambers and the increased speed of steamers
every year opened up fresh sources of supply, and
by 1892 Australia, South Africa, Florida and
California were beginning to compete with
France and Spain in the provision of old-established Mediterranean commodities such as grapes,
oranges and peaches. (ref. 100)
Figure 17:
Covent Garden Market in 1926, plan. Redrawn from a plan in Report on Covent Garden Market by the Town Clerk of the City of Westminster, 1926
Nor was this all. In 1889 the superintendent
of the market stated that English growers were
planting fruit trees on an extensive scale, and
'putting up Acres of Glasshouses, especially for
Grapes, Tomatoes and Cucumbers, which are
now reckoned by the Tons instead of lbs… .' (ref. 101)
Within four years English fruit grown under
glass was important enough to lower the price of
foreign grapes, tomatoes and cucumbers, (ref. 102) and
in 1895, the largest English apple season then
known, the volume of foreign produce sold at
Covent Garden declined while that of home
grown goods continued to increase. (ref. 103) In this
same year, too, the rapid growth of trade in cut
flowers, chiefly from the Scillies, the Channel
Islands and France, required the erection of a
temporary corrugated iron building in the
Tavistock Row area. (ref. 104)
This colossal increase in the scale and complexity of operations at Covent Garden more than
counterbalanced the simultaneous expansion of the
area of the market buildings; like the Red Queen
in Alice Through the Looking Glass, the Dukes of
Bedford had to be forever running merely to stay
in the same place. Congestion grew worse, particularly in James Street, where several houses
on the west side did not belong to the Duke and
the occupants constantly obstructed access to the
market by spreading their goods (free of toll) over
the road. (ref. 105) The police were unhelpful, and in
1886 the First Commissioner informed Bourne
that he would 'be glad to receive any suggestion
you may have to make as to any method by which
the present scandalous condition of the Market
arrangements can be mitigated. It is quite evident', he continued with more optimism than
foresight, 'that the time cannot be far distant when
some fresh arrangements will have to be made to
enable the people of London to buy their fruit
and vegetables without the loss of time, the inconvenience and the danger which at present
exist.' (ref. 106)
But it was not only the police who were
criticizing the Dukes of Bedford towards the end
of the nineteenth century. Punch, of course,
maintained its attacks on the condition of Covent
Garden, but there were more important critics.
Under the Metropolitan Board of Works and the
vestries and district boards the standards of local
administration in London had fallen behind those
of great provincial cities like Birmingham or
Manchester, but in the late 1880's there arose a
formidable demand, led by the Fabian Society, for
the re-assertion of London's municipal preeminence. The London County Council was
established in 1889, just too soon for it to be
endowed at birth with the powers recommended
in 1891 by a Royal Commission on Market
Rights and Tolls. This Commission had spent
several years in collecting evidence and had subjected John Bourne to prolonged examination
over Covent Garden before recommending that
local authorities ought to be empowered to purchase privately owned markets, if necessary by
compulsion. (ref. 107) Armed with the facts which the
Commission had elicited and published, Sidney
Webb wrote for the Fabian Society (and also for
the second elections to the London County
Council, due to be held in 1892) a devastating
pamphlet entitled The Scandal of London's
Markets.
He began by quoting the evidence given by
Bourne to the Royal Commission that the ninth
Duke's average annual net profit from the
market during the three years 1884–6 had been
£15,000 (ref. 108) and stated flatly that this was 'an
utterly unjustifiable tax on the food of the
people'. Private property in markets, he continued, ought, 'like private property in mints,
courts of justice, post offices, telegraphs, public
offices, pocket boroughs, votes, army commissions, and so many other things, finally to cease
out of the land'. What London needed was a
public authority for the control of all metropolitan
markets, and 'The County Council appears to be
the authority best suited for this work'. (ref. 6)
The Progressive majority group of members of
the London County Council was extremely
sympathetic to views of this kind, and soon after
the elections of 1892 the Council decided to seek
statutory power to purchase markets compulsorily. (ref. 109) A Bill was introduced in the House of
Commons in 1893 but did not reach its second
reading before the end of the session. (ref. 110) Meanwhile the short-lived Liberal Government had
appointed a Royal Commission to consider 'the
Amalgamation of the city and the county of London', and the whole question was adjourned. (ref. 111)
Shortly afterwards the Conservatives under Lord
Salisbury returned to power, and in due course
they rejected the Royal Commission's recommendations. In 1899 they established the
twenty-eight metropolitan borough councils as a
counterweight to the County Council, whose
radicalism they so much disliked. (ref. 112) The Conservatives at Westminster remained in office until
1905, and the Progressives at County Hall were
therefore unable to obtain power over markets,
but in the year after the great Liberal victory of
1906 the Progressives lost their majority on the
Council to the Municipal Reformers (or Conservatives), who retained their ascendancy until
1934. (ref. 113) And so once again, as in 1883 when the
ninth Duke of Bedford had offered to sell his
market to the municipal authorities, Covent
Garden continued in private ownership.
But the ideas expressed in Sidney Webb's
pamphlet were gaining increasing public acceptance. Bourne's arguments before the Royal
Commission on Market Tolls in 1888, that
through the recent clearances around the market
the ninth Duke had forfeited a rental of £5,000
per annum, that the toll payable on a bunch of
carrots was only 1/32 of a penny, and that the
Duke's market income was no more a tax on the
public's food than the rent received by the landlord of a shop, had not entirely convinced his
audience. (ref. 114) The fact remained that the Duke
made a handsome profit, and so, when the demand
for public ownership reached its climax in 1891–3,
Alfred Stutfield, Bourne's successor as steward,
compiled figures which purported to show that the
net market revenue was not substantially greater
than that which would accrue if the whole area
were let on building lease. He calculated that
since 1828 successive Dukes had laid out
£260,383 in capital expenditure. The net income in 1894 was £29,786, which after deduction of interest at 3 per cent on the capital
sum, left an actual net income of £21,975. The
superficial area of all the markets (the chartered
area, the Floral Hall, the Flower Market and the
Tavistock Row and Russell Street areas) was
189,687 square feet, which if let at 2s. per square
foot would produce an annual income of £18,968.
It appears, however, that the total area of the
market was really larger than that stated, and
Stutfield's calculations took no account of the
large reversionary value which the buildings
would in due course yield if the whole site were
let. (ref. 86) There was no denying that the Duke's
market property yielded an exceptionally high
return; Stutfield's figures were not published.
Many years later the eleventh Duke's very
distinguished agent-in-chief, Rowland Prothero
(sometime M.P. for Oxford University, President
of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, and
created Baron Ernle in 1919), made a much
better defence, though it would not have impressed the Fabians, who wanted to reconstruct
the whole social fabric of the country. In his
autobiography, published in 1938, he pointed out
that the market had been only one limb of a huge
and preponderantly agricultural family estate, and
that during the prolonged farming depression of
1879–98 the agricultural properties had become
'practically insolvent'. During these years successive Dukes had granted enormous remissions
of rent to their tenants and made very substantial
donations for the promotion of their well-being
(see page 49). In the single year of 1895 the
eleventh Duke had received no income from his
agricultural estates, but had paid out over £7,000
in expenses. (ref. 115) Viewed in this perspective the
Covent Garden revenues assume a rather different
aspect.
These facts were not, of course, publicly known
until long afterwards, and meanwhile Dukes were
becoming unpopular. 'A fully equipped duke',
observed Mr. (later Earl) Lloyd George during
the budget crisis of 1909, 'costs as much to keep
up as two Dreadnoughts, and dukes are just as
great a terror, and they last longer.' (ref. 116) In
Prothero's less picturesque language, 'Public
opinion was setting strongly against the accumulation of large landed properties in the hands of
individuals.' During the early twentieth century
the eleventh Duke sold half his agricultural
estates, mostly to the tenants in occupation, and at
last, in 1918, the Russells' connexion with
Covent Garden and its market, now likely to
become 'a dangerous property for an individual to
hold', was ended. (ref. 117) The Duke's net revenue
from the market in 1914 had been £48,724 (ref. 118) —
a far cry from the early days of the market when
the fifth Earl had leased his rights to George
Collop and Sarah Bennett for £5 a year.
The negotiations for the sale of both the market
and virtually the whole of the surrounding estate,
which had been proceeding for five years, are
described on page 50. In 1914 Sir Joseph
Beecham, owner of the famous proprietary brand
of pills, had entered into an agreement to buy the
market and surrounding estate from the eleventh
Duke for £2,000,000, but had died in 1916 before the completion of the purchase. Sir Joseph's
executors at once instituted a Chancery action for
the settlement of the estate and in 1918 the Duke's
Covent Garden property was conveyed to a
private company called the Covent Garden Estate
Company Limited, of which Sir Joseph's sons,
Sir Thomas, the musician, and Henry Beecham
were directors. (ref. 119) Sir Thomas's musical affairs
were under a temporary cloud occasioned by his
father's financial entanglements, and so he
'decided to give the community of Art a miss for a
while'. For several years he attended daily at the
offices of the Covent Garden Estate Company
and superintended the sale of the outlying portions of the estate and the enlargement of the
revenue of the remainder. (ref. 120) In 1924 the Covent
Garden estate and the pill manufacturing business
were united by the flotation of a public company
called Beecham Estates and Pills Limited, which
now became the owner of the market. (ref. 121)
Meanwhile the market was for the first time
the object of attacks from Whitehall—appropriately in duplicate. Shortly after the end of the
war, when the price of food was extremely high,
the London County Council urged the Government to investigate the facilities and ownership
of the metropolitan markets. (ref. 122) In the autumn
of 1919 the Ministry of Food set up a departmental committee for this purpose, (ref. 123) and a short
while later the Ministry of Agriculture and
Fisheries established a similar committee on the
Distribution and Prices of Agricultural Produce.
Before either of these committees could report the
Covent Garden Estate Company Limited offered,
in the summer of 1920, to sell the market to the
County Council. But by this time the company
had already sold much of the property adjacent to
the market which would be needed for its enlargement, and as the area offered was not large
enough to permit any improvement in either
access to or accommodation in the market, the
Council declined the offer. (ref. 124)
In due course the Ministry of Agriculture's
committee reported that Covent Garden was 'a
confused and unorganised anachronism … wholly
inadequate to deal efficiently with the volume of
produce handled. In no other country is the
accommodation so deficient and the congestion so
acute. The market is owned privately by a company which has not set itself to make the necessary
alterations.' Nevertheless the committee admitted that the company's heavy initial programme
of renovations and improvements (including the
installation of electric light) had for several years
prevented the payment of any dividend, and that in
the three years 1920–2 the return on the capital
value of the market averaged slightly less than 5
per cent per annum. (ref. 125) The committee on the
Wholesale Food Markets of London reported
in much the same sense and concluded firmly
that markets 'ought to be administered not in the
interest of Private Owners or of Separate Local
Authorities, but in the public interest', and that a
statutory market authority for the whole of
Greater London should be established. (ref. 126)
Neither of these reports produced any results
in Covent Garden, chiefly because in August 1921
the Government had set up an equally abortive
Royal Commission to examine the whole question of the government of London, (ref. 127) and until its
views were known it would have been premature
to establish a new metropolitan market authority.
But the two departmental reports are nevertheless
important because they recognized, firstly, that
in the matter of markets the principles of Fabian
Socialism propounded by Sidney Webb in the
1890's had now been officially accepted as public
policy; and secondly, that Covent Garden had
become a national problem. In some markets,
reported the Minister of Food's committee,
'improvements and extensions are urgently required which cannot be carried out under their
present ownership and management'. (ref. 126) The
ninth Duke of Bedford had been fully aware of
this fact in the 1880's. Now, forty years later, it
had at last received governmental recognition.
Another forty years were to elapse before it received governmental action.
During the interim period between recognition
and action the owners of the market made two
attempts to solve the problems of Covent Garden.
In 1925–7 Beecham Estates and Pills Limited
negotiated to buy a large site at the Foundling
Hospital, St. Pancras, to which the market should
be removed. A Bill to give effect to this proposal
was introduced in Parliament, but the company
met with such widespread opposition from
public, professional, commercial and private bodies
that it was withdrawn in February 1927. (ref. 128)
(fn. n)
Removal being rejected, the only alternative
was extension around the existing site. But this
too was impracticable for a commercial company,
for unlike the Dukes of Bedford in earlier years,
Beecham Estates and Pills owned very little
property in Covent Garden not already in market
use, and to buy sites was impossible for a management unendowed with statutory compulsory
powers. In 1928 the pill manufacturing side of the
business was sold, the name of the company was
changed to Covent Garden Properties Company
Limited and as a firm dealing exclusively in real
estate this company had soon acquired much
property elsewhere in London. (ref. 129) It at once
prepared a scheme for the development of the
market on its existing site, but soon found itself
in much the same dilemma as the Duke of Bedford in 1883. Before work could begin the Corporation of the City of London (now the owners
of Covent Garden's sole rival, Spitalfields Market)
objected to the proposed alterations on the
grounds that they would contravene the company's rights under the charter of 1670. In due
course the Corporation 'intimated that they might
like to purchase the market' but the sole result of a
year of negotiation was the abandonment of the
proposed improvements. (ref. 130)
In desperation the company therefore decided
in 1930 that it was 'desirable that the market
should be administered either by the Government
or by some properly constituted authority', and
turned to Westminster City Council for support.
But the Council would only agree to the company's alternative proposal, to request the
Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and the
Minister of Transport to institute an enquiry
into the future administration of the market 'with
a view to the formation of a public utility company'. Unfortunately, however, the Minister of
Agriculture had just published another report on
the markets of London, (ref. 130) so nothing more was
done, and the company was left to cope (like the
Dukes of Bedford before) as best it might.
It or its subsidiary continued to own the market
until 1962, but although the amount of merchandise handled at Covent Garden had more than
doubled between 1910 and 1929 (ref. 131) the sole
important extension of the market which it was
able to achieve was made possible only by the
normal course of real estate management—in this
case the expiry in 1928 of the lease of the
Tavistock Hotel, which the company already
owned and upon the site of which Mart Street
was laid out in 1932–3. (ref. 132)
It was a Conservative government which at
last took Covent Garden Market into public
ownership. In 1955 the Home Secretary, the
Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister
of Agriculture set up a committee under the
chairmanship of Viscount Runciman to investigate the existing methods of marketing vegetables,
fruit and flowers and to make recommendations
for their improvement. After a very detailed enquiry the Runciman Committee recommended
that, in order to reduce the volume of trade concentrated at Covent Garden, a new wholesale
market should be created to serve the north-west
of London. It would then be possible to reorganize the Covent Garden site to provide
proper facilities for the market to perform its
functions as the most important price-setting
market in the country. To achieve these and
other improvements elsewhere the committee
urged that a statutory London markets authority
should be established forthwith. (ref. 133)
In June 1958 the Government announced its
acceptance of the Runciman Committee's view
that Covent Garden Market should not be moved,
but it rejected the proposals for a new market in
north-west London and for the establishment of
'a London Horticultural Markets Authority to be
responsible for planning and general supervision
of all the existing markets'. It did, however,
accept the need for a Covent Garden Market
Authority, and legislation was promised in a White
Paper published in November 1959. (ref. 134)
The Covent Garden Market Bill was introduced in the 1960–1 session of Parliament and
received the royal assent on 27 July 1961. (ref. 135)
Under the powers of the Act the Minister of
Agriculture, on 30 October 1961, constituted the
Covent Garden Market Authority with eight
members under the chairmanship of Sir Ian
Jacob. (ref. 136) On a date to be determined by the
Minister the lands shown on fig. 18 were to be
vested in the Authority, and the market rights
conferred by the letters patent of 1670 and the Act
of 1828 were to be extinguished. The new
Authority was then to take over the duty of
managing the market. (ref. 135)
The vesting day was 25 March 1962. On the
following day the Authority paid to Covent
Garden Market Limited (a subsidiary company of
Covent Garden Properties Company Limited)
the sum of £3,925,000 in compensation for the
loss of its property and market rights. Public
ownership had at last been achieved. During its
last complete year of working in private ownership (the year ending 30 September 1961) the
net market revenues were £138,765, and those
from the estate £59,941. The profit before
taxation amounted to £197,158. (ref. 137)
The duties of the Market Authority were
firstly, to provide a market within the designated
Covent Garden Area (the large area around the
market, shown on fig. 18); secondly, to improve
the existing facilities or to provide better ones
elsewhere in that area; and thirdly, to provide
storage facilities for bulk produce and empty
containers, if possible outside the Covent Garden
Area. Within seven years the Authority was to
reduce the area of the market to 10 acres; it was
also to reduce fire risk and traffic congestion and,
so far as possible, the volume of produce brought
in bulk to the market, while increasing the amount
of business done there. (ref. 138)
Figure 18:
Covent Garden Market Act, 1961, areas. Redrawn by permission from a plan in Covent Garden Market Authority
First Report 1961–1962. Stippled area denotes land vested in Covent Garden Market Authority. Broken line denotes the
boundary of the Covent Garden area
In order to prevent any further unofficial outward extension of the market the Authority at
once introduced a licensing system which applied
to the land used for market purposes within the
designated area but outside the area actually vested
in the Authority. (ref. 139) The archaic system of tolls
and rents (the former still wholly based on the
Act of 1828, and the latter partly so) was revised,
and an attempt was made to relieve congestion by
the provision of a marshalling yard for lorries on
the south side of the Thames. (ref. 140)
But these activities were overshadowed by the
question of the future site of the market itself.
The Act of 1961 imposed upon the Authority
the duty either to improve the facilities on the
existing market lands or to provide better ones
elsewhere within the adjacent designated Covent
Garden Area. But during the debates in Parliament on the Bill there had been strong opposition
to the retention of the market anywhere within
the designated area, and the Government had
therefore undertaken that if the Authority were
in due course to recommend that the market
should be altogether removed from the area, the
Minister would allow the Authority to promote
a Bill to make this possible. The Authority was
therefore able to examine possible sites anywhere
in London, and in March 1962 it commissioned
the Fantus Company International Division to
undertake this examination. (ref. 141)
The Fantus Company investigated five sites—
at Seven Dials (within the designated Covent
Garden Area), Nine Elms, Wood Lane, Beckton
and King's Cross, the last of which had been
suggested as a possible site some years earlier.
In its report, presented in the spring of 1963, the
Fantus Company recommended removal to
Beckton, where the capital and operating costs
would be far lower than elsewhere. The Authority's Market Management and Market Workers'
Committees did not view this proposal favourably,
but before any decision was taken British Railways
informed the Authority that another site at Nine
Elms, much larger than that investigated by the
Fantus Company, might become available. The
Authority therefore decided to undertake an
intensive feasibility study of this new site, (ref. 142) and
in April 1964 it recommended to the Government that the market should be removed to Nine
Elms. The Government accepted this view (ref. 143)
and in November 1964 the necessary Bill was
presented to the House of Commons. (ref. 144) It
received the royal assent on 10 March 1966, and
provided for the removal of the market to Nine
Elms by the end of 1971. (ref. 145)
Architectural Description
Fowler's Market Buildings
Plates 36, 37,
38, 39, 40,
41, 42 figs. 15–16
Charles Fowler's connexion with the building
of markets dated from 1824–5, when he was
working on designs for the rebuilding of Hungerford Market, Charing Cross. Through this work
he received the sixth Duke of Bedford's commission to design the new buildings at Covent
Garden, and these were actually built in 1828–30,
before those at Hungerford Market, which were
not erected until 1831–3. Subsequently he
designed the Lower Market at Exeter, and was
executive architect for the Higher Market in the
same city. (ref. 146)
His engraved plan for Covent Garden (Plate
40a), from which the executed design obviously
developed, provided three parallel ranges of shop
buildings extending east-west, having between
them two open market places for stalls. Each of
the long and narrow outer ranges ended with small
square lodges, intended for offices or coffee houses,
and in the centre was a large pavilion forming a
vestibule to the open markets. These outer
ranges were to be divided into small square shops
arranged back to back, whereas the shorter but
wider middle range was to contain two rows of
deeper shops separated by a spinal passage. All the
shops were to be fronted by colonnaded walks,
and the three ranges linked across the east and
west ends by quadruple colonnades or porticoes.
In execution, however, the plan was varied by the
provision of some two-bay shops and the substitution of a Middle Row, or arcade, 16 feet wide
and lined with shops, instead of the spinal passage
originally intended for the middle range. Furthermore, objection having been raised by the Duke's
adviser, Mr. Charlwood, to 'the occupation of so
much space by the colonnades', those facing the
inner market places were omitted together with
the quadruple colonnade at the west end. This
last was criticized by The Gardener's Magazine,
where it was said to be wanting 'to complete the
symmetry of the building'. (ref. 147)
Like all Fowler's market buildings, Covent
Garden was skilfully planned and architecturally
distinguished. The buildings, designed in the
Graeco-Roman style of the period, were executed
in grey granite and yellow brick with dressings of
Yorkshire freestone and some painted stucco. The
north and south fronts, being similar, have each
a prominent central feature consisting of a
Serlian or Venetian archway flanked by wide piers
supporting a triangular pediment, containing a
cartouche carved with the Russell family arms.
On either side of the central feature extends a
range of shops, behind a Tuscan colonnade of
twelve bays with a single-bay return against a
lodge, or square pavilion of two storeys. The
columns of the colonnades are monoliths of grey
granite on unmoulded bases, and they support a
simple entablature and balustrade of stone. Each
lodge has a ground storey of grey granite built
in chamfer-jointed courses, and an upper face of
mock-jointed cement finished with an eavescornice. A leaded roof of low pyramidal form
rises to a pedestal chimney-stack.
Figure 19:
General view of Covent Garden Market area
While the central feature of the north range is
east of the centre of James Street, the axis of the
lofty middle range of buildings conforms with that
of St. Paul's Church and Russell Street. The
Middle Row, or Central Avenue, is entered from
the east through the quadruple colonnade linking
the three ranges. Before the addition of a second
storey, the flat roof of this colonnade formed a
terrace reached by staircases in the north-east and
south-east lodges. The rear part of this terrace
was taken up by twin conservatories of iron and
glass flanking the upper part of the east front
where, below a pediment decked with symbolic
urns and a sculptured group by R. W. Sievier, an
arched opening afforded a view into the Central
Avenue. From there, in turn, could be seen the
handsome fountain of Devonshire marble which
formed a central feature on the terrace (Plate
41c).
The Central Avenue is a well-designed
shopping arcade, with its walls finished in stucco
jointed to resemble masonry. The three-bay
shop fronts and mezzanine windows are framed
in wide segmental-headed recesses, their unmoulded arches rising from bold imposts above
plain piers. A moulded stringcourse underlines
the attic stage, where windows are set in groups
of five behind dwarf Doric columns. The partly
glazed roof of low pitch rests on a series of wooden
king-post trusses. An iron and glass shelter of
utilitarian character, extending across the west
end of the market, largely conceals the original
west front of the middle range. This has a
Tuscan colonnade of five bays projecting below
an upper storey of seven bays, the middle one an
open arch rising into a pediment-gable which
extends above the first of the three bays (each
containing a window) that flank the arch.
The market was provided with all desirable
amenities, the shops having ample cellarage as
well as upper rooms for offices or storage. The
cellarage, which extended below the greater part
of the site, included facilities for storing fruit and
vegetables, and for washing potatoes. The entire
market could be cleaned and flushed with water
supplied by an artesian well, 280 feet deep, in
the centre of the site.
The eastern half of the northern market space,
where the fruit market was held, was originally
covered in with a wooden 'roof in three parts,
open at the sides for ventilation and light…,
supported by cast-iron pillars, from which spring
circular ribs, instead of horizontal tie-beams'. (ref. 148)
The southern market space was roofed in 1874–5
and the northern in 1888–9, when the original
wooden roof at the east end of this space was
removed and re-erected at the north corner of
Russell Street and the Piazza, where it still stands.
All this work was executed by Cubitt's, whose
elegant cast-iron and glass structures resemble
the contemporaneous railway station sheds. Two
rows of tall columns, placed against the brick
walls to conform with Fowler's bay spacing, are
linked laterally by skeleton arches below an unglazed clerestory having two small arches to each
bay. These arcades support the semi-circular
trusses on which the roof rests, its slopes, partly
slated and partly glazed, being broken near the
ridge by a raised skylight with open sides.
The Flower Market
Plate 43
In its existing form, the Flower Market is an
extensive structure of cast-iron arcades with
glazed clerestories, supporting slated roofs and
skylights, planned in the form of two wide and
lofty naves extending northwards between three
aisles. The short east nave returns to form a
transept which crosses the west nave. The Tavistock Street front is a bold and effective design,
Victorian Renaissance with a Roman flavour,
executed in red brick with stone dressings. The
nave and aisle divisions are marked by pilasters,
between which are spaced seven round-arched
openings, a pair of windows to each nave, a
window to the west aisle, and doors with fanlights to the middle and east aisles. Above each
of the wide bays, containing the paired windows,
rises a pedimented attic with a large lunette
window. A similar feature, ending the west transept, is the dominant note in the long west elevation. The earlier east front to Wellington Street
is most impressive, with three lofty round-arched
recesses framing, respectively, two doors and a
window below radial fanlights. This front, built
of stone and white brick, is finished with a
panelled and bracketed entablature and an open
balustrade.
The 1904–5 extension to the Flower Market
has a lofty ground storey given over to the market,
and three floors of offices reached by a circular
staircase and lift in the pavilion at the corner
of Wellington and Russell Streets. The Edwardian Baroque exterior, in red brick and stone, has
an arcaded ground storey, paired windows to the
two upper storeys, and wide dormers in the steep
roof. The faceted corner pavilion, where the
windows rise to follow the spiral staircase, is
finished with a concave-buttressed attic and a
helmet-shaped dome.
The Foreign Flower Market
Plate 47c
The Foreign Flower Market, or Jubilee
Market, of 1904, is a free-standing oblong building of two lofty storeys, both divided longitudinally by a row of widely spaced columns. The
ground storey is largely open to the surrounding
streets, the upper one lit by clerestory windows and
two long roof-lights. The red brick and stonedressed exterior, Edwardian Baroque in style, has
at each corner a pavilion feature of two pedimented stages surmounted by a small dome.