St Paul's

Stand for a moment beneath the deep stone portico on the edge of the piazza. Listen. A juggler is calling to the crowd, someone laughs, coins drop into a hat, and the smell of coffee drifts across the cobbles. Above you, four heavy columns hold up a roof that juts far out over your head. This calm, plain building has watched over London's street theatre for nearly four hundred years. Welcome to St Paul's, Covent Garden, the church that Londoners call the Actors' Church.

The story begins in the early seventeenth century. The land here belonged to the Earl of Bedford, who wanted to turn old convent fields into a smart new district for wealthy tenants. He hired Inigo Jones, the leading architect at the royal court. Jones had travelled in Italy and studied the buildings of the Renaissance there. He brought back an idea that was new to London: an open, formal square, lined with elegant houses, with a church as its centrepiece. The piazza you see in front of you grew from that plan.

The church went up in the early 1630s. It was one of the first entirely new churches built in London since the Reformation, the sixteenth-century break from the Roman Catholic Church. Jones chose an ancient style called Tuscan, the simplest of the classical orders. Look at the columns. There are no carved leaves, no scrolls, almost no decoration at all. The roof overhangs on wide eaves, like a farmhouse in the Italian countryside.

That plainness gave rise to a famous story. According to a tale repeated by later writers, the Earl told Jones he did not want to spend much money. He asked for something not much better than a barn. Jones is said to have replied that the Earl would have the handsomest barn in England. Nobody can prove the exchange really happened. But stand back and look at the long, low roof, and you can see why the story has lasted.

Now here is the first surprise. Walk up to the doors behind the portico. They do not open. This grand front, facing the piazza, is a false entrance. Jones designed it to face east, toward the square, but church custom places the altar at the east end. The clergy would not accept a main door behind the altar. So the real way in is around the back, through the quiet churchyard on the far side of the building.

This portico has a starring role in literature. George Bernard Shaw chose it as the opening scene of his play Pygmalion. On a wet night, a crowd of theatregoers shelters right here from the rain. Among them is a flower seller called Eliza Doolittle, and a professor of speech called Henry Higgins. The same scene opens the musical My Fair Lady. When you see shoppers ducking under the columns during a shower, you are watching that scene play out again.

The second surprise is written on the wall nearby. In May 1662, the diarist Samuel Pepys recorded watching an Italian puppet show close to this spot. Many historians treat this as the first recorded Punch and Judy show in England. Look for the plaque that marks the event. Puppeteers still remember it today. Each year, the church holds a special gathering for Punch and Judy performers, and the churchyard fills with striped puppet booths and very loud puppets.

In the late eighteenth century, disaster struck. In 1795, a fire tore through the building and destroyed much of the interior. The architect Thomas Hardwick led the rebuilding. He worked carefully to keep the spirit of Jones's design. So when you look at the church today, you see Jones's ideas, but much of the fabric is later work. This mix of original plan and careful repair is common in old London buildings, and it is part of the story here.

Now make your way around to the real entrance. You can reach the churchyard through narrow gateways from the surrounding streets. The noise of the piazza falls away almost at once. Inside the gates, you find a small garden with trees, benches and flower beds. Office workers eat lunch here. People read quietly in the shade. It feels like a private courtyard, even though it sits only a few steps from one of the busiest squares in central London.

Why the Actors' Church? The answer lies all around you. Covent Garden grew into the heart of London's theatre district, with the Royal Opera House and many West End theatres close by. Over the centuries, actors, singers, dancers and stage workers came here to worship, to marry and to remember their dead. The bond is still alive. Memorial services for performers take place here, and the church keeps close ties with the theatre world.

Inside, walk slowly along the walls. You will find dozens of memorial plaques to people from the stage and screen. Among the names are Charlie Chaplin and Vivien Leigh, along with many performers whose fame was smaller but whose work mattered just as much to the theatre. Reading the plaques feels like reading a cast list of British entertainment history. Some are formal. Some are short and personal, written by friends who knew them well.

The church also holds a link to one of England's greatest wood carvers. Grinling Gibbons, whose detailed carvings of flowers, fruit and leaves decorate royal palaces and great churches, is buried here. His skill was so fine that his carved wood can look soft enough to pick. It is fitting that a craftsman of such careful detail rests in a church built on such simple lines. Plain walls, it seems, make a good frame for fine work.

As you leave, pause once more on the piazza side. Look up at the triangular pediment, the shallow roof and the four sturdy columns. Then look down at the crowd gathered on the cobbles, watching a performer balance on a unicycle or sing for coins. Street performance in this square goes back centuries. Pepys's puppets, Shaw's flower seller and today's acrobats all share this same stage. The church is their backdrop, quiet and steady, as it has been since the 1630s.

So take a last look at Jones's handsome barn. Notice how the pale stone catches the light, and how the deep shadow under the portico gives people a place to stop and gather. Then step back into the piazza, and listen again to the laughter and the music. You are standing in a scene that has repeated itself here for generations... and the next performance is just about to begin.