Turning westward, we see what is left of Newcastle Street, which was named after John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, who owned the ground (1711). The work of demolition is going on as far as Catherine Street, where the Gaiety theatre still stands, though not for long, for the second great scimitar sweep of the new street will join the Strand here. The parish of St. Paul's lies like a leaf on the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, by which it is wholly surrounded. Its southern boundary runs most erratically, zigzagging in and out across the streets which connect Maiden Lane and Henrietta Street with the Strand. The eastern line keeps on the east side of Bow and Brydges Street. The north passes along the north side of Hart Street, and the west cuts across the east ends of Garrick and New Streets, keeping to the east of Bedfordbury. The name Covent is a corruption of Convent, and is taken from the convent garden of the Abbey of Westminster, which was formerly on this site. It was written Covent, as taken from the French _couvent_ more immediately than the Latin _conventus_. At the dissolution of the monasteries, Westminster Convent Garden became Crown property. In the first year of his reign Edward VI. granted it to the Duke of Somerset. On the fall of that nobleman it reverted to the Crown, and in 1552 was granted to the Earl of Bedford with "seven acres, called Long Acre." The Earl of Bedford built a town-house on his newly acquired property, and devoted himself to the improvement of the neighbourhood. Though the parish is so small, it is full of interesting associations, chiefly of the last two centuries. Wits, actors, literary men, and artists, frequented its taverns and swarmed in its precincts. The contrast between its earlier days, when it was a quiet retreat where the monks slowly paced beneath the sheltering trees, and its later vicissitudes, when the eighteenth-century roisterers and gamesters made merry within its taverns, could hardly be more striking. The great square called the Market was laid out by the Earl of Bedford in 1631; the Piazza ran along the north and east sides; the church and churchyard formed the west side; on the south was the wall of Bedford House, and by a small grove of trees in the middle stood a sundial. The place gradually grew as a market. In 1710 there were only a few sheds; in 1748 the sheds had become tenements, with upper rooms inhabited by bakers, cooks and retailers of gin.