Covent Garden soon just a name

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33671, 22 October 1974, Page 19

Covent Garden soon just a name

(By

BARRY MAY,

X.Z.P.A -Reuter corropondcn:)

LONDON. Among rotting fruit and vegetables on cobbles trod by kings and courtesans, they are shedding a quiet tear or two for a corner of London that is dying. Covent Garden, for 300 years Britain’s national cabbage patch, is moving to a new marketplace, and it seems a good deal of the atmosphere of central LonI don, a merry blend of chaos, I colour, and Cockney costermongers, will be lost. The tangled labyrinth of alleys, byways, and covered arcades that make up the country’s principal wholesale market for fruit, vegetables, and flowers, just north of the Strand has become too i congested for good business. NOT SAME The new market, across the river on the south side of the Thames, is modern, clean, and designed for efficiency. But it won’t be the same, the old hands say. “I’ve been here 35 years and I tell you it’s a crying shame, mate,” says Ivor Clark, a 60-year-old salesman in the floral hall. “This is history, mate. You’re tearing down the Opera House and all these lovely old buildings. But you can’t beat the property dealers.”

, Leslie Smallpiece, aged 68, i who has worked at Covent I ' Garden for 47 years, reckons i : the market should have, (stayed in central London. (“They shouldn’t move us : over there. Besides, some of. Jus small traders can’t afford’ the rates at the new place.” There has been a market at Covent Garden since the i Middle Ages, when garden-' ers at the old Abbey ofi Westminster sold surplus produce from their Convent ( Garden to the local popu-i lace. It was royally chartered in ' 1670 by Charles 11, the Eng- . lish king who took Nell Gwynne, a comely seller of ; oranges, into his court. They j i met at the market, according i ■ to local legend. PIAZZA The market was centred; on a grand piazza built 20: years earlier by the architect ; Inigo Jones, with a great , barn-like church, St Paul’s, i on one side. St Paul’s — not to be confused with the cathedral about two miles to the east — became the actors’ church, and many famous theatre folk are buried in its graveyard. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Covent Garden was notorious for its whores, rogues, and gin parlours. All the while the market prospered. More buildings were put up in the piazza in 1832, though roofs

.were not added for another 50 years. |< 1 From notoriety, the marjket area passed to fame. Tabled in guidebooks for its, early morning public houses | such as The Nag’s Head. 1 (where porters could but beer at 5 a.m., and for its all night coffee stall, fre quented by revellers and 1 I cloaked opera dames from - I the Covent Garden Opera House nearby. ■ Scenes from the film. “My ■Fair Lady”, were shot in the ■ central market area and bx 1 St Paul’s. In its 300 years. Covent Garden expanded from its original six acres to (encroach upon nearly 301 (acres of surrounding streets. Piecemeal development and the change from horse-; (drawn carts to long-haul' I motor lorries created congestion. Covent Garden now I handles about a million tons! of produce worth about ( $141.6m each year. About I half of that is imported. Some 300 traders work there, but the total number; of people employed on market business is about 4000.: About 1000 delivery vehicles! and 3000 collection vehicles call each day. The new $65.5m market is two and a half miles away at Nine Elms, once a grimy yard in Battersea. It covers 68 acres with ■ capacity for 2000 com- ■

,mercia! vehicles and liKKi ■ I cars at any one time. Growers, importers, r wholesalers, and buyers will all be able to achieve sub- i stantially reduced operating | costs compared with the old'i i market, and will enjoy much I better conditions and greatei ■ I convenience when it opens j I in November, say the|l authorities. Unloading times will be cut dramatically, produce 11 will be handled speedily ant i safely, and damage reduced:, (to a negligible level. c MEMORY i Everything is neatly ar-( ranged. But there is not much room for nostalgia, and the unique character ol

seems doomed to be only a memory. Nobody quite knows what will happen to the old piazza and us Inigo Jontt columns when the dawn footfalls of porters, shouting, cursing, and laughing, has died, and the rotten fruit has been washed from the gutters tor the last time. lhe Royal Opera House is to take some buildings for its own expansion, lhe test is subject to passionatelycontested public debate.