Issue No. 19: Of Covent Garden & Covert Gatherings
The seedier side of Georgian London, my guilty pleasure, and Henry VIII's psalter.
Happy Friday! I’ve been laid up with a cold after traveling the last few days. It’s been a struggle to get back into writing regularly in addition to designing products, brainstorming a different newsletter, and hopefully learning to use my new Siser Juliet to make stickers.
In the meantime, however, here’s what’s covered in this week’s newsletter!
A brief history of Covent Garden
A reminder to watch Harlots on Hulu because it’s one of the best period dramas out there
My regular round-up on what’s happening in the history and heritage spheres
Let’s go ahead and dive right in to the seedier side of Georgian London!
Covent Garden: A Brief History
In December 2015, my husband and I stumbled upon London’s Covent Garden district during a trip to England (and hangry-induced delusions, but we won’t talk about that!). It’s a lively area on London’s West End, filled with a variety of stores and goods. These days, people bustle through Covent Garden’s markets, perhaps blissfully unaware of the district’s more notorious past.
Modern-day Covent Garden lies on what had been the Saxon settlement of Lundenwic.1 Archaeological digs found pits, one of which contained a ceramic pot dated to around 500 AD.2 King Alfred the Great later moved this settlement into the relative safety of the nearby Roman walls.3
In medieval times, the area that is now Covent Garden was a walled garden and later a kitchen garden, serving as monastic lands for the Abbey of St. Peter, Westminster. The word "covent" relates to an Anglo-French term for a religious community.
The 1530s saw King Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries - a time when the monarchy seized religious properties, their land, and incomes and absorbed them into the crown or redistributed them to noblemen. King Edward VI granted St. Peter’s monastic lands to John Russell, first Earl of Bedford.
Later, in 1630, the fifth Earl of Russell commissioned the famous architect and planner Inigo Jones to create the country’s first public square at Covent Garden. This square became known as the Piazza. Local markets flourished, selling predominantly flowers, herbs, fruits, and vegetables. Businesses supporting more pleasurable pursuits sprang up - bookshops, cafes, taverns, gambling dens, and brothels.
18th-century Covent Garden was known as London's red-light district. A list of ladies-of-ill-repute circulated from 1757 to 1795. Called Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, it served as a guide to these ladies, offering comments on their appearance and, uh, proclivities.
The pocket guide - and Hallie Rubenhold’s book on the same subject - inspired Hulu's show Harlots. Harlots, starring the inimitable Samantha Morton and Lesley Manville, offers a feminist-centered take on the women who frequented Covent Garden in the 1760s. The show depicts a war between two brothels in eighteenth-century London and how value was ascribed to various ladies of ill-repute through Harris’s List. I usually describe it as a cross between Bridgerton and Game of Thrones…with more GoT and less Regency England-tinted lenses…it’s admittedly one of my guilty pleasures!
Covent Garden offers a unique and fascinating microcosm of how a London district developed over time.
Book of the Week: Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies by Hallie Rubenhold
Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies: Sex in the City in Georgian England by Hallie Rubenhold details some of the entries in the eighteenth-century Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, the aforementioned book describing a woman's finer assets or lack thereof as well as her...proclivities from 1793. It also provides a brief overview of the list's history, written between 1757 and 1793. Though quite short at 158 compact pages, Sex in the City offers readers some unique insight into this period of history. Not surprisingly, the guide sold around 250,000 copies.
Artifact of the Week: Perspective View of Covent Garden
In doing research on London's Covent Garden for this newsletter, I came across this plate called Perspective view of Covent Garden, 1740-1742 by engraver John Maurer. Maurer moved to England in about 1745 and created many engravings of London architecture and locations, often from his own pen-and-ink drawings.
You see towering buildings on either side, surrounding the square. Peddlers sell their wares, a small gathering cheers as two men face off in a boxing match, people chatter, and others go about their day. The view looks west towards St. Paul's Church.
Artifact Description
Title: Perspective view of Covent Garden
Artist: John Maurer
Place of Publication: London, England
Medium: Plate
Date: 1740-1742
Measurements: 294 mm x 464 mm
Collection: Royal Academy of Arts
From Around the Web
Henry VIII’s handwritten annotations in one of his psalters reveal that he used books to justify his actions surrounding his desire for a legitimate heir and his fear of death (via Smithsonian Magazine).
Archaeologist Stéphen Rostain has discovered a massive city that housed upwards of 30,000 people in the depths of the Ecuadorian Amazon (via ArtNet).
As always, thank you so much for reading! Wishing you and yours a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day! I look forward to sharing a new book review on Monday!
Cheers,
Featured image: Covent Garden (Getty Images/LuisPinaPhotography)
"The early years of Lundenwic", Museum of London. Archived from the original on 8 January 2009. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
Ibid.
John Clark, "King Alfred's London and London's King Alfred", London Archaeologist 9, no. 2 (London Archaeologist Association, 1999): 35–38. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 May 2011. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
Thank you.