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Bedford Street, LONDON, WC2E 9ED

It is the east front of St Paul's Church, Covent Garden which is more usually seen as it looks on to the Covent Garden Piazza. This was the scene in My Fair Lady. The entrance though is to the west and this is the side seen here, approaching from Bedford Street. St Paul's was the first entirely new church to be built in London since the Reformation. It was commissioned from Inigo Jones by the Duke of Bedford and was begun in 1631, and the church was completed in 1633 and consecrated in 1638. It was known as 'The handsomest barn in England'. It is also known as the Actors' Church because of its long association with the theatre community and among the dozens of plaques to well known actors and film stars, the two most recent are to Diana Rigg and Ian Holm, both of whom died in 2020. The most notable people actually buried here are Thomas Arne, who composed Rule Britannia, and the wood carver Grinling Gibbons.

Looking along King Street.

Grade II listed. http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-208624-gateway-to-inigo-place-and-st-pauls-chur

Grade II listed. http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-208624-gateway-to-inigo-place-and-st-pauls-chur

This new business sells & rents vintage designer clothes. It's run by the singer Lily Allen and her step-sister Sarah Owen. The run-up to the opening was the subject of a documentary series in March 2011 on Channel 4 called "lily Allen: From Riches to Rags"

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. Charles Fowler’s designed covered market in the middle of Piazza was completed in 1830. It looked much as it does today except that the two main aisles were uncovered. The glass roofs were added separately in 1875 and 1889. In 1964 the Covent Garden Market Authority (CGMA) decided to move the market to Nine Elms in Battersea. Left empty in 1974 the Central Market Building was preserved and renovated by the Greater London Council, and reopened in 1980 as a complex of shops, boutiques, and open-air restaurants. ( http://www.covent-garden.co.uk/index.html )

The Punch and Judy is in the middle of the Covent Garden Piazza. It is spread over two floors. The lower level is in the marketplace itself.

A rich pair. The nearer, no. 27, has a complicated building history. Built c1760, the columned ground floor was added in 1808-10 (by J.G. Mayhew), and the stucco, cornice and armorial (Image]) were added in 1853-57 (probably by Charles Mayhew). The C19th work was done for the Westminster Fire Insurance. Its neighbour was built in 1856-58 by T. Little in a similar style for the same company. Grade II listed. At the time clothing emporia, Moss Bros and The Suit Company.