\paperw3360 \margr0\margl0\ATXph16380 \plain \fs20 \f2 \fs22 The original name for this area was æConvent GardenÆ. In fact its developme
nt came about as a result of Henry VIIIÆs dissolution of the monasteries between 1536 and 1540. The æConvent GardenÆ was part of the estate that had fallen to the Russell family, whose descendant, the fourth Earl of Bedford, obtained a licence to build
as many æhouses and buildings fit for the habitations of gentlemen and men of abilityÆ as he should think proper.\b \b0 It was at Covent Garden in 1631 that the notion of a coherent urban plan made its first appearance in London. The man responsible f
or this was Inigo Jones, the first of the great English architects. He had studied landscape painting in Italy, and from Venice introduced the Palladian style to England. In his designs for the \b \cf4 \ATXht11521000 Church of St Paul\b0 \cf0 \ATXht0
in Covent Garden, he added an imposing portico in the Tuscan style to the fa┴ade overlooking the Piazza. Since the entrance to the church is by the opposite west end, this amounts to an architectural charade: a mere front that relates more to the open s
pace of the square than to the structure of the building itself. This shift away from the function of an individual building towards the exigencies of townscape was a revolutionary leap forward in LondonÆs urban development.\par
The casual sale of frui
t, flowers and vegetables in Covent Garden was put on a commercial footing in 1671, when a licence for a proper market was obtained. The sudden arrival of hordes of raucous countryfolk with their produce clearly did not appeal to the aristocratic reside
nts of the square, who started to move west, thus contributing to a gradual process of social stratification by area, with the wealthy clustering in exclusive settlements in the West End, while the East End became the repository of the less well endowed.
This process gained further impetus from the growing aristocratic snobbery directed against tradesmen in general.\par
