January 2009
Street features
Every Covent Garden Street has its own history, some more desirable than others.
Please select street below and meet some of Covent Garden’s characters over the years.
- Please choose a street from the below -
Bow Street
Opera Houses, bawdy houses and coffee houses made Bow Street famous. The renowned Bow Street Runners were established here but it was also a haunt for criminals. High society, philanthropists and literati once entertained themselves and dwelled amongst a disreputable and dangerous rabble.
Shaped like a bow, the original street of the 1630s ran from Floral Street to Tavistock Street. It was later extended north to Long Acre and south to the Strand via Wellington Street. As early as 1632, the vicinity of Bow Street and Drury Lane became known as 'Thieving Alley', which was increasingly "Troblinge the adjacent areas... by lewdest Blades and female Naughty-packs"!
In 1637 Bow Street was set out with good-class housing and shops. But with the coming of the Civil War, the area deteriorated once again. Many grand houses owned by Royalists were left empty and vandalised. After the battle of Naseby, Oliver Cromwell who had been living in the fashionable shopping area of Long Acre until 1645, moved to Bow Street.
After the Restoration, William Unwin established the famous Will's Coffee House on the corner with Russell Street. Dryden's patronage in the 1690s made it a haunt of intellectuals, with Pope, Steele, Addison and Pepys frequent visitors. Early residents of the street included Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, born here in 1661. The collection of books and manuscripts owned by him and his son was one of the main foundations of the British Museum Library. Another eminent bibliophile, Dr John Radcliffe (1650 - 1714) whose patients included William III and Queen Anne, left a sum of money that helped to found the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Grinling Gibbons, the carver, lived here in the last quarter of the 17th century. Amongst the thespian residents, actor Charles Macklin lived here in 1743-8, and dramatist William Wycherley lodged here in 1715. David Garrick and Peg Woffington lived at number six in 1742-4, entertaining the likes of Fanny Burney and Samuel Johnson. For the opposite end of the social spectrum, the Parish founded a poorhouse here in 1723.
COURTS AND CRIME SQUADS
Thomas de Veil established the forerunner of the Bow Street Magistrates Court in 1740. He acquired the house at number four and used it as a Magistrate's office. He was very severe and the public hated him, especially when he brutally put down a demonstration by a union of Covent Garden footmen who had banded together to complain about low pay and conditions. Despite this, he was knighted in 1744, but he was so disliked that on his death in 1748 he was discretely carried out of his house at three in the morning, to prevent public disorder.
bowstr3.jpgHenry Fielding, thought of as an honest and humane judge, took over the Magistrate's office, using it while he was a JP in 1747. Lawyer, dramatist and novelist of The History of Tom Jones and The Adventures of Joseph Andrews, his comedies had a political edge. He influenced Walpole's government, was appointed as a Westminster Magistrate in 1748 and edited the Covent Garden Journal, a popular newspaper of its day. He was eminently aware of the problems of crime and disorder in London. In 1744 he received a report stating that the great number of brothels and taverns in Covent Garden were a cause of increasing robberies. By 1748 there were eight licensed premises on the street, and Fielding proclaimed that every fourth house in Covent Garden was a gin shop. When the craze for gin was at its height in London, a Bow Street tavern boasted: "Here you may get drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence and get straw for nothing." Lack of law and order was also blamed. The report stated: "{There is} neglect by the Watchmen and Constables of the night... these taverns and houses are kept by persons of the most abandoned character such as bawds and thieves, receivers of stolen goods, and also the Sheriffs officers who keep lock-up houses... the principal of these houses are situate in Covent Garden." These lock-ups were lodgings in which malefactors (usually debtors) could pay to stay, keeping them out of prison proper. When they could no longer afford the costs, they were often sent to a nearby prison. The new Covent Garden Theatre was blamed for aggravating the crime problem. With highway burglary and street crime widespread, a form of police force was desperately needed, although hotly debated. Up until 1750 soldiers were called in to uphold the law. In 1749 as a response to increasing demand, Fielding organised freelance 'thief-takers', who became known as the Bow Street Runners in 1754.
Sir John Fielding his blind brother succeeded him, consolidating his work with the court and the crime squad. In 1828 the Bow Street Runners were overtaken by Robert Peel's force (the famous 'Peelers'). This was the foundation for the Metropolitan Police Act. The idea eventually spread across the world.
In Oliver Twist, Dickens brought the pickpocket the Artful Dodger before the magistrates in Bow Street. When blue lamps were introduced outside police stations in 1861, Queen Victoria was reminded of the blue room in which Albert died whenever she visited the Opera House. At her command, Bow Street became the only police station that did not have a blue lamp - but a white one. The present Palladian building, designed by Sir John Taylor, was a new purpose-built police station and police court, with a section house for 106 PCs, completed in 1881. There were 13 beats radiating from it- arranged so that their paths crossed - so that constables would be alerted if they could not see each other. At the end of the 18th century the character of the street was set as one of distinguished semi-public buildings.
HISTORY OF THE HOUSE
The Covent Garden Theatre came to Bow Street courtesy of John Rich in 1732. The theatre's immediate popularity necessitated extension and rebuilding in 1782 and 1792. Robert Smirke's Neo-Classical theatre replaced the theatre burnt to the ground in 1808, and it was again rebuilt as the Royal Italian Opera in 1846. Much of the present Royal Opera House was reconstructed after another disastrous fire, at a grand Masque. The Floral Hall was added in 1860, with a double life as an exotic fruit and flower market by day, and a night venue for balls and concerts. Used as a furniture warehouse during WW1 and a dance hall in WW2, the House opened as a permanent lyric theatre soon after the war. In 1999 the Royal Opera House was reopened after substantial modernisation designed by Dixon Jones, fully restoring E M Barry's auditorium. Two entrances to the House from the Corinthian frontispiece on Bow Street, next to the dazzling Floral Hall, are open to the public Monday-Saturday 10.00-15.30.
