Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A shop in this street that the Austens patronised by mail order was Penlington's, a tallow
chandlers at the sign of the Crown and Beehive, Charles Street (the name of the street at
the time). It evidently produced superior candles, for on 1 November 1800 Jane tells Cas-
sandra, who has just passed through London on her way to Kent, that their mother was
'rather vexed' because Cassandra did not call at Penlington's but that she had sent a written
order, 'which does just as well.'
Continue up Wellington Street and turn left into Tavistock Street. This may be where the
Austen family went to the dentist when in London. On 24 August 1814 Jane wrote, 'My
Brother & Edwd arrived last night … Their business is about Teeth & Wigs, & they are
going after breakfast to Scarman's & Tavistock St.'
Tavistock Court leads to the Covent Garden piazza. The Covent Garden area was deve-
loped as a smart residential district in the early seventeenth century when the 4th Earl of
Bedford commissioned Inigo Jones to create 'houses fitt for the habitacions of
Gentlemen
and men of ability,' around the first open public piazza in England.
After the Great Fire of London (1666), when many small markets were destroyed, it
became a major fruit and flower market and the tone changed drastically. The homes of
the wealthy were transformed into hotels, gaming houses, coffee houses and bath houses -
hummums or bagnios - that were often nothing more than brothels. By the eighteenth cen-
tury, Covent Garden was a major centre for entertainment and a by-word for vice at night,
as well as being a market by day.
Turn left and walk along to the east portico of St Paul's Church. If a member of the
Austen family were to stand where you are now, the familiar scene before them would have
been one of stalls and sheds - essentially a large-scale street market. The handsome neo-
Classical buildings that fill the centre of the piazza were built between 1828 and 1830.
The essayist and poet Leigh Hunt wrote:
[Covent Garden market] has always been the most agreeable in the metropolis ... The country girls who
bring the things to market at early dawn are a sight themselves worthy of the apples and roses ... And the
Ladies who come to purchase, crown all. No walk in London on a fine summer's day is more agreeable
than the passage through the flowers here at noon when the roses and green leaves are newly watered...
