This church was built by Inigo Jones in 1633 and consecrated in 1638. It was destroyed by fire in 1795 except for the walls, portico and southeast chapel, but was rebuilt on the plan and in the proportions of the original. It was the first formally Classical building in England, that is, the first to have a row of columns across the front. It appears in a print by Hogarth entitled ‘Morning’, indicating that many of the homeless inhabitants of London gathered here in a makeshift shelter called Tom King’s Coffee House’. The portico gained its greatest fame, however, when it figured in the opening scene of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. Later, a stage representation of it was seen by millions around the world in the musical and film adaptation of My Fair Lady.
Covent Garden, once the vegetable gardens of Westminster Abbey, was in the seventeenth century the property of the earl of. Bedford. His plan was to create a piazza with the church as the focal point. Toward that end, he engaged architect Inigo Jones as builder. Apparently, the earl had second thoughts about the cost of his project, and he told Jones that the new chapel should not be ‘much better than a barn’. The architect replied, ‘Well, then, you shall have the handsomest barn in England’.
In the early days of St Paul’s, Covent Garden, it had a burying ground like a country church. Here were laid to rest a great many persons famous in the world of the theatre, the arts, music and literature. These included Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels under Charles I; Samuel Butler, author of Hudibras; Sir Peter Lely, the painter; William Wycherley, the dramatist; and Grinling Gibbons, sculptor and woodcarver. Some later associations are the great watercolour artist, J.M.W. Turner, who was baptized here on 29 August 1773; W.S. Gilbert of musical-comedy fame, who was also baptized here, on 11 January 1837; and the great Victorian actress Ellen Terry, friend of Charles Dickens, whose ashes are in a casket on the south wall. Other more modern theatre personalities are commemorated on a screen at the west end of the church.
For many years Covent Garden was the site of the wholesale fruit, vegetable and flower market. In Edwardian times, flower girls like Eliza Doolittle sold their wares from the steps of St Paul’s. The wholesale market has now moved outside London, and its picturesque building near the church is now a museum of London Transport, surrounded by restaurants and shops. The church is still used for worship services and as the headquarters of the Actors’ Church Union.