the Piazza

Piazza (The), in Covent Garden, an open arcade on the north and east sides of Covent Garden Market place; built by Inigo Jones, circ. 1633–1634, and very fashionable when first erected, and much admired. The northern side was called the Great Piazza, the eastern side the Little Piazza. It occurs for the first time in the Rate-books of St. Martin's under the year 1634; and the leases of the two houses at the south end, next Great Russell Street (exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries in 1853), granted to Sir Edmund Verney, were dated 1634. That half of the east side of the Piazza south of Russell Street, on which the Hummums stands, was destroyed by fire in March 1769, and rebuilt without the arcade. It was again rebuilt in 1888; the northern half of the east side (including the Bedford Hotel) was pulled down in 1889 for an enlargement of the market into Bow Street. The western half of the north side (west of James Street) was pulled down about 1880, and rebuilt by Messrs. Cubitt.

Piazza—a Market place or chief street; such is that in Covent Garden, which the vulgar corruptly call the P. H., or I know not what.—Blount's Glossographia, 12mo, 1656.

But who should I meet at the corner of the Piazza, but Joseph Taylor;¹ he tells me, there's a new play at the Friars to-day, and I have bespoke a box for Mr. Wild and his bride.—The Parson's Wedding, by T. Killigrew, fol. 1663.

"In the arcade," says Walpole, "there is nothing very remarkable; the pilasters are as errant and homely stripes as any plasterer would make." This is true now, though hardly true in Walpole's time, when the arcade remained as Inigo had built it, with stone pilasters on a red brick frontage. The pilasters, as we now see them, are lost in a mass of compo and white paint; the red bricks have been stuccoed over, and the pitched roofs of red tile replaced with flat slate. The rebuilt portion to the west of James Street exhibits the red bricks.

Cockayne. Ay, Marry Sir! This is something like! These appear like buildings! Here's architecture exprest indeed! It is a most sightly situation, and fit for gentry and nobility.
Rookesbill. When it is all finished doubtless it will be handsome.
Cockayne. It will be glorious; and yond magnificent peece the Piazza will excel that at Venice, by hearsay (I ne'er travelled).—Brome's Covent Garden Weeded, 1659.

Walking thence together to the Piazza they parted there; Eugenius and Lisideius to some pleasant appointment they had made, and Crites and Neander to their several lodgings.—Dryden, Essay on Dramatick Poesy, 4to, 1668.

Puh, this is nothing; why I knew the Hectors, and before them the Muns and the Tityre Tu's; they were brave fellows indeed; in those days a man could not go from the Rose Tavern to the Piazza once, but he must venture his life twice, my dear Sir Willy.—The Scowrers, by T. Shadwell, 4to, 1691.

London is really dangerous at this time; the pickpockets, formerly content with mere filching, make no scruple to knock people down with bludgeons in Fleet Street and the Strand, and that at no later hour than eight o'clock at night: but in the Piazzas, Covent Garden, they come in large bodies, armed with couteaus, and attack whole parties, so that the danger of coming out of the play-houses is of some weight in the opposite scale, when I am disposed to go to them oftener than I ought.—Shenstone to Jago, March 1744.

Unfortunately for the fishmongers of London the Dory resides only in the Devonshire Seas; for could any of this company but convey one to the Temple of Luxury under the Piazza,² where Macklin the high priest daily serves up his rich offerings to the goddess, great would be the reward of that fishmonger.—Fielding, A Voyage to Lisbon, 1754.

Otway has laid a scene in The Soldier's Fortune in Covent Garden Piazza; and Wycherley a scene in The Country Wife. In Cocks's auction-rooms (afterwards Langford's, then George Robins's) Hogarth exhibited his "Marriage-à-la-Mode" gratis to the public ; and "in the front apartments, now (1828) used as breakfast-rooms by the proprietor of the Tavistock Hotel," lived Richard Wilson, the landscape painter.³ He had a model made of a portion of the Piazza, the whole measuring about 6 feet from the floor, which he used as a receptace for his painting implements. "The rustic work of the piers was divided into drawers, and the openings of the arches were filled with pencils and oil bottles."⁴ It appears, from the baptismal register of the parish of St. Paul, Covent Garden, during the reigns of Charles II., James II., William III., and even later, that "Piazza" was a favourite name for parish children. The baptismal registers are rife with Peter and Mary Piazza, John Piazza, Paul Piazza, etc. The reason may be well imagined:—

For, bating Covent Garden, I can hit on
No place that's called Piazza in Great Britain.—Byron's Beppo.

Eminent Inhabitants.⁵—Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, the poet; he was living here, in the north-west angle, in 1637. Thomas Killigrew, the wit; he was living in the north-west angle, between 1637 and 1643, and in the north-east angle,1660–1662. Denzill Holles, in 1644, under the name of "Colonel Hollis;" and in 1666 and after in a house on the site of Evans's Hotel, afterwards inhabited by Sir Harry Vane, the younger (1647), and by Sir Kenelm Digby (1662).

Since the restauration of Ch. II. he [Sir Kenelm Digby] lived in the last faire house westward in the north portico of Covent Garden, where my L^d. Denzill Holles lived since. He had a laboratory there. I think he dyed in this house. Sed qu. —Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 327.

Nathaniel Crew, third and last Lord Crew, and Bishop of Durham from 1681 to 1689, in the same house. It appears, from the books of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, that almost all the foundlings of the parish were laid at the door of the house of the Bishop of Durham. Aubrey de Vere, the twentieth and last Earl of Oxford; in the north- east angle, from 1663 to 1676; he lived in what was Killigrew's house. Sir Peter Lely, from 1662 to his death in 1680; at the north-east, where Robins's auction-room afterwards was; the house was inhabited by Roger North, the executor of Lely,⁶ and by his eminent brother, Sir Dudley North, who died in it, December 31, 1691. It is now a portion of the Tavistock Hotel. Viscountess Muskerry, in 1676; in the north-west angle, corner of James Street. This was the celebrated Princess of Babylon of De Grammont's Memoirs. Sir Godfrey Kneller; he came into the Piazza the year after Lely died, and the house he occupied was near the steps into Covent Garden Theatre; he had a garden at the back, reaching as far as Dr. Radcliffe's, in Bow Street, "which was extremely curious and inviting, from the many exotic plants, and the variety of flowers and greens which it abounded with."⁷ Here, therefore, and not in Great Queen Street, the scene of the well-known anecdote of Kneller's and Radcliffe's comical quarrel must be laid. Kneller lived here for twenty-one years. He had left in 1705.⁸ Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne.

I have quitted my old lodging, and desire you to direct your letters to be left for me with Mr. Smibert, painter, next door to the King's Arms Tavern, in the Little Piazza, Covent Garden.—Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, August 24, 1726 (Berkeley's Lit. Relics, p. 160).

Russell, Earl of Orford.

Hard by the church and at the end of the Piazzas [now Evans's Hotel] is the Earl of Orford's house. He is better known by the name of Admiral Russell, who in 1692 defeated Admiral de Tourville near La Hogue, and ruined the French fleet.—A New Guide to London, 12mo, 1726, p. 26.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu lived in the Piazza for some time: there is a letter from Pope addressed to her here.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is dangerously ill at her house in the Piazza, Covent Garden.—Grub Street Journal, September 17, 1730.

Lankrink and Closterman, painters; in the house lately Richardson's Hotel, now rebuilt and occupied as Lockhart's Cocoa Rooms. Sir James Thornhill, in 1733; in the second house eastward from James Street. Zoffany, the clever theatrical portrait-painter; in what was afterwards Robins's auction-room, in the north-east wing of the Piazza. Here he painted Foote, in the character of Major Sturgeon.

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¹ An actor in Shakespeare's plays as originally brought out, and one of the best.
² "The Great Piazza Coffee-room in Covent Garden, late Macklin's." Advertisement in the Public Advertiser, March 6, 1756.
³ Smith's Nollekens, vol. ii. p. 213.
⁴ Ibid., vol. i. p. 142.
⁵ From the Rate-books of St. Martin's and St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and other sources.
⁶ North's Lives of the Norths, ed. 1826, vol. iii. p. 227.
⁷ Life of Radcliffe, by Pittis, 8vo, 1736.
⁸ Daily Courant of March 1705.