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Front elevation of Covent Garden Market, Covent Garden. Architect: Charles Fowler. 1828-31. London. Photographs copyright 2005 George P. Landow. [Click on the photographs to enlarge them.]
Left: Three-quarter view from left. This view shows Scottish granite columns on front and side plus ground-floor rustication; the glass and iron roof appears at upper left. Right: Right side.: A good contrast of engineering (in the iron-and-glass roof) and architecture (in the stone columns that create an arcade that runs the length of each side of the market). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Left: Central raised portion of glass roof with brick chimneys in foreground. Note the classicizing stone railings below. Right: View of Chimneys. [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Interior
Left: Wood beams in one of the corridors. Middle: View of central hall. Right: Iron columns supporting the roof.
Two views of beams and lanterns.
Ruth and Tom Pinch walk through Covent Garden
Many and many a pleasant stroll they had in Covent Garden Market; snuffing up the perfume of the fruits and flowers, wondering at the magnificence of the pineapples and melons; catching glimpses down side avenues, of rows and rows of old women, seated on inverted baskets, shelling peas; looking unutterable things at the fat bundles of asparagus with which the dainty shops were fortified as with a breastwork; and, at the herbalist's doors, gratefully inhaling scents as of veal-stuffing yet uncooked, dreamily mixed up with capsicums, brown-paper, seeds, even with hints of lusty snails and fine young curly leeches. Many and many a pleasant stroll they had among the poultry markets, where ducks and fowls, with necks unnaturally long, lay stretched out in pairs, ready for cooking; where there were speckled eggs in mossy baskets, white country sausages beyond impeachment by surviving cat or dog, or horse or donkey; new cheeses to any wild extent, live birds in coops and cages, looking much too big to be natural, in consequence of those receptacles being much too little; rabbits, alive and dead, innumerable. Many a pleasant stroll they had among the cool, refreshing, silvery fish-stalls, with a kind of moonlight effect about their stock-in-trade, excepting always for the ruddy lobsters. Many a pleasant stroll among the waggon-loads of fragrant hay, beneath which dogs and tired waggoners lay fast asleep, oblivious of the pieman and the public-house.— Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewitt, ch. 40 (about London)
Other views of Covent Garden and related material
- Entrance to Covent Garden, London with Robert Siever's statue of Flora at the curved roof peak
- “The Spring season in Covent-Garden Market” (from the 1867 Illustrated London News)
Last modified 16 May 2017