Once a month, a member of the City of London Guide Lecturers Association (CLGLA) leads an early morning tour of Smithfield Market, the last of the wholesale markets to remain in Central London. Geoff Boyd, one of the two CLGLA guides qualified to lead groups around the market, met us at the crack of dawn on Wednesday morning for a walk that would take in the market buildings as well as the surrounding streets.
This location, just on the northern edge of the ancient City of London, is steeped in history. Even before we reached Smithfield Market there was mass of information to take in – one of the first buildings we came across was the church of St Bartholomew The Great on Cloth Fair. The church is all that remains of a large monastery which once stood on the site – from the medieval period onwards the monks hosted a regular fair, thus giving the street its name. Although it started out as a place for merchants to trade, by the Victorian era it had become a magnet for licentious and lewd behaviour so in their wisdom the City fathers closed it down…
A little further along the street at no. 41 is the oldest townhouse in the City of London, which also marks the northernmost extent of the Great Fire of London. This building, which dates from 1597, was recently sold to a private buyer for a cool £6m. At no. 43 you’ll find the old home of Sir John Betjeman. Now owned by the Landmark Trust you can rent the rooms that he lived in as they are now let out as a holiday flat for visitors to London…
Time for a little history – in ancient times this area of London was known as ‘smoothfield’, and for centuries was the site of a regular Friday livestock market. By the mid 1800s however the area was being encroached upon by houses and commercial premises – understandably residents and business owners found the regular movement of large numbers of cattle to be a hindrance and so in 1852 the Smithfield Market Removal Act was signed into law. This saw the livestock moved to a new location on Copenhagen Fields in Islington (part of the site is now Caledonian Park) but this clearance allowed the land to be put to another use – thus the Smithfield meat market was born.
[nggallery id=7]
Designed by Sir Horace Jones (who was also responsible for the Old Billingsgate and Leadenhall markets) the first two sections of Smithfield Market, the East and West Markets, were opened in 1868. These rather ostentatious buildings were a remarkable achievement at the time – one of the first steel-framed buildings, their construction involved over 5 miles of girders and an underground railway was built to facilitate the easy transportation of meat products to far flung parts of the British Isles. Now used as an underground car park, the tunnels were still in use as late as the 1960s – today you can still see the spiral ramp that leads down to the tunnel entrance and you can peek inside. All you have to do is watch Skyfall, the latest Bond movie, as the whitewashed chambers below the market featured as the temporary headquarters of MI5…
Soon after the East and West Markets were completed work started on three more buildings – a poultry market, a fruit and vegetable market and a fish market. Unfortunately the poultry market burned down in 1958 and was replaced by an example of brutalist 1960s architecture designed by Sir Thomas Bennett. It has several interesting features including a very shallow dome that is only 3 inches thick (so as not to spoil the profiles of the Victorian buildings on either side) and some very unusual hexagonal glass blocks that line the loading bays at the rear. The fruit and veg market (known to Smithfield traders as ‘The Village’) and the fish market never really took off because of the availability of better facilities nearby – today the fish market is largely derelict and Crossrail are storing some of their equipment in the shell of the other building.
[nggallery id=8]
Today Smithfield market operates in virtually the same way that it did when it was opened – whole carcasses are delivered and then butchered (or in some cases simply stored and then shipped out again) with most cuts being sold to restaurateurs, caterers, hotels and smaller retailers. Many of the traders at Smithfield have rich histories – members of the Andrade family have been selling meat on the site since 1868 and Keevil & Keevil are also original traders. Find Finclass Ltd amongst the stalls and you’ll have discovered the suppliers of meat to Buckingham Palace no less.
There are lots of other interesting historical details to learn on one of the monthly walks – for example there’s a market bell which used to be rung to mark the start and end of trading (rather like the New York Stock Exchange) but now you’ll only hear it once a year – at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month the bell is tolled to commemorate the 110 traders who died when a V2 rocket landed on the market in 1945. The market also has it’s own constabulary, with the 20 officers employed to maintain the security of the market 24/7, 365 days a year. The Port of London Cold Store with its impressive frontage, and which sits just beyond the market, is also an interesting building. It’s been overtaken by advancements in refrigeration since it opened at the turn of the century but now has a rather novel use – within its walls is a gas-fired combined heat and power system which supplies local municipal offices, the Barbican and Smithfield Market itself.
Smithfield Market is open to the public, so as a consumer you’re perfectly entitled to pop along and buy cuts of meat, sausages or deli products yourself – in general, their prices are far below what you’d see on the high street. There is one large caveat however – you will have to start early if in you’re in search of a bargain, as the butchers turn up at 3am, trading starts at 4am and by about 7:30am most traders are done for the day…
Like it’s sister organisation to the north, the Clerkenwell and Islington Guides Association, the CLGLA is the officially recognised body for tour guides within the City of London. Their members are experts in their particular fields and all have a guiding qualification awarded by the City of London Corporation. In addition to the monthly tour of Smithfield Market, they offer weekly tours of the Thames riverside, the Guildhall Art Gallery, the Mansion House and more. All of the tours are listed on their website here and they all represent really good value for money – our Smithfield tour cost each participant the grand sum of £8…