Hotels near Covent Garden in London
Covent Garden sits right in the heart London and is the centre for entertainment and leisure activities in the capital. Covent Garden's street entertainers, great restaurants and exciting bars make this the most vibrant area of the city. Theatreland surrounds Covent Garden, and for shoppers the area is well known for it's wide range of unique boutiques. Covent Garden is a shopping and entertainment complex in central London. The flower, fruit and vegetable market, previously associated with Covent Garden, has moved to Nine Elms, Vauxhall. The area also contains an entrance to the Royal Opera House. 'Covent Garden' is properly the area of London bounded by High Holborn, Kingsway, The Strand and Charing Cross Roads. However that phrase is commonly used to describe the open area at its centre built from the original market for which 'Covent Garden Piazza' is the proper name.
A settlement has existed in the area since the Roman times of Londinium. Covent Garden was the name given, during the reign of King John (1199 - 1256), to a 40 acre (160,000 m²) 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. In this quadrangle the Abbey or Convent of St Peter, Westminster, maintained a large kitchen garden throughout the Middle Ages to provide its daily food. Over the next three centuries, the monks' old "convent garden" became a major source of fruit and vegetables in London and was managed by a succession of leaseholders by grant from the Abbot of Westminster. This type of lease eventually led to property disputes throughout the kingdom, which King Henry VIII solved in 1540 by the stroke of a pen when he dissolved the monasteries and appropriated their land. King Henry VIII granted part of the land to John Russell, Baron Russell, Lord High Admiral, and later Earl of Bedford. In fulfilment of his father's dying wish, King Edward VI, bestowed the remainder of the convent garden in 1547 to his maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset who began building Somerset House on the South side of The Strand the next year. When he was beheaded for treason in 1552, the land came once again into royal gift, and was awarded four months later to one of those who had contributed to Seymour's downfall. Forty acres (160,000 m²), known as "le Covent Garden" plus "the long acre, were granted by royal patent in perpetuity to the Earl of Bedford. The modern-day Covent Garden has its roots in the early seventeenth century when land ("the Convent's Garden") was redeveloped by Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford. The area was designed by Inigo Jones, the first and greatest of English Renaissance architects. He was inspired by the grand piazzas of Rome and other Italian cities and created a large open public space at the centre of the Garden.
We have a large selection of quality hotels accommodation within easy reach of Covent Garden and other London attractions