April 30, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



213 



of English gardens, but of Germany, France, Holland, Italy, 

 Australia and America, for sale in this market. Thousands of 

 tons of vegetables, fruit, plants and flowers are brought here, 

 sorted, sold by auction or otherwise, and taken away again on 

 almost every day in the year. 



Covent Garden is within a stone's throw of the Strand, which 

 runs equidistant between the market and the River Thames. 

 It is not far from Westminster Abbey, of which it once formed 

 part of the grounds, Covent being a corruption of convent. 

 The Convent Garden, "an enclosure or pasture browsed by 

 deep-udder'd kine, and probably the haunt of the lark and 

 nightingale." In 1552 it was granted to John, Earl of Bedford, 

 and in 1631 the market square was laid out, and the arcades or 

 piazzas erected. The market was confined to a grove of trees, 

 beneath which the stalls of the dealers were placed for shelter. 

 By the middle of the eighteenth century the market had be- 

 come important ; but it was used for the sale of other corn- 



wide and fifty feet high. These again are flanked by the shops 

 and offices of wholesale dealers and agents. Auction sales are 

 held here daily at ten o'clock, and from soon after midnight 

 crowds of porters are engaged in transferring from the vans 

 outside packages of all kinds and from all directions. Huge 

 cellars below all the buildings and passages afford storing ac- 

 commodation for vegetables and fruit which are not for imme- 

 diate sale. Hundreds of bunches of bananas and pineapples 

 from the West Indies are stored here to ripen. Above the 

 shops there are more storerooms. Four staircases lead from 

 the central passage to a range of conservatories stocked with 

 aquatic plants and animals, foreign birds of all kinds, hardy 

 plants, principally conifers, in pots and tubs, with other garden 

 material, all calculated to delight the dweller in town and 

 tempt him to buy. 



The roads surrounding the markets are broad, for the con- 

 venience of the large vans which in the morning block the 



Fig. 36. — Ligustium Sinense. — See page 212. 



modifies besides the products of the garden. In 1830 the 

 numerous wooden sheds and stalls were swept away and re- 

 placed by the present market-house. Loudon wrote of this 

 building in 1831 : "To walk through this market with the recol- 

 lection of what it was three years ago, gives rise to a variety of 

 reflections. By what cause has it come to pass that the pil- 

 lared grandeur and temple-like magnificence, which in former 

 and no distant times were exclusively devoted to the edifices 

 consecrated to the gods or occupied by princes, are now 

 judged appropriate to the scene of humble industry and the 

 abode of every-day people ! " 



The whole market occupies a space about 400 feet square, 

 or, say, three acres. The buildings consist of a central avenue 

 or arcade,' with shops on each side, which are stocked at all 

 times of the year with the choicest and richest fruits and flow- 

 ers. These are open all day. Parallel with the arcade on each 

 side is a spacious glass-roofed hall 200 feet long, sixty feet 



way. The flower-market is a handsome structure, which was 

 erected in 1885 to meet the enormous increase in the whole- 

 sale trade in this department. It covers an area of about 150 

 feet square and fifty feet high. A broad central path and 

 numerous narrower side-paths divide the whole into plots, 

 upon each of which is a cast-iron stage with three tiers, the 

 top one eight feet from the ground. Upon these the plants 

 and flowers are arranged. The space is let in lengths of ten 

 feet, the name of each holder being over his stall. This space 

 is rented at the rate of one shilling and threepence per square 

 foot per annum. Even this market is not nearly sufficient to 

 hold all that is brought by the London market-gardeners, for 

 whose exclusive use it is kept, and outside there are numerous 

 vans from which the flowers and plants are purchased direct. 

 This is probably the handsomest and best arranged flower- 

 market in Europe, and it is the depot of the very best of flow- 

 ers and flowering plants that England can produce. Every 



