Covent Garden [ Institutions ]
… century, but the intrusion of a market was followed by its remaking as a pleasure district, including many sites of sociability, such as theatres, taverns, brothels and coffeehouses. These were populated by a cross-section of London … Westminster, and near to the major thoroughfare to the commercial City of London, enhanced its importance as a site of sociability at the heart of the eighteenth-century metropolis. 1 Covent Garden’s social life was most obviously fuelled … The first coffee house to open overlooking the piazza was the Bedford in 1726, marking a new era for sites of indoor sociability, often frequented by writers, artists, actors and patrons of the theatre, the actor Charles Macklin even …
Coffeehouses | Commerce | Market | Prostitution | Theatre
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