Document
A Plan of the Parish of St Paul's Covent Garden
This is a 19th-Century copy of a map from the beginning of the previous century. It shows Old Bedford House in the Strand. Individual houses around the piazza in Covent Garden are numbered. The New Exchange is marked on the Strand. This was a very smart shopping arcade completed in 1609, taking over much of the trade of the Royal Exchange after it was destroyed in the Great Fire. Historian and biographer John Strype described it in 1720 as ''a place of great resort and trade for the nobility and gentry.''
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