Smithfield: alternative option for reviving historic London market

Plans to redevelop Smithfield could mutilate the London building - but there is an alternative

The Meat Market at Smithfield, where the General Market

 and Fish Market face redevelopment

Smithfield Market in London is the greatest parade of 19th-century covered market halls in Europe. Now a storm is breaking over the buildings at the western end - the General Market, with its distinctive dome and arched galleries, and the unusual triangular Fish Market.

Henderson Global Investors, backed by the City of London Corporation, is proposing to gut almost all these market halls and replace them with office blocks looming above preserved street frontages. This would be the worst mutilation of a major Victorian building in 30 years.

Save Britain’s Heritage, the conservation group that I founded in 1975 with Simon Jenkins, Dan Cruickshank and others, is determined the site should reopen as a retail market modelled on those at Covent Garden, Greenwich and Spitalfields.

In all these places covered markets have played a key role in revitalising areas, making them attractive places to work, shop, eat and drink. Smithfield has the potential to be a still bigger magnet, as it stands above two major rail routes: Crossrail running east-west to Heathrow, and Thames Link, which connects Gatwick and Luton airports.

National preservation groups, including the Victorian Society and World Monuments Fund, backed by celebrities such as Alan Bennett and Julian Lloyd Webber, have condemned the plans, which the City Corporation voted this month to approve.

London’s markets have a long history - Smithfield dates back to the 12th century, and Covent Garden and Spitalfields to the 17th century. Originally, stalls would have been set out in the open air but rising standards of hygiene led to covered markets. Many of these structures are triumphs of Victorian engineering. As a result, London’s historic markets have always been as enjoyable to visit for their architecture as for their produce.

Yet in the brave new world of postwar town planning there was little interest in the preservation of these buildings. London’s mighty Caledonian Market was bulldozed in the 1960s. London’s Covent Garden Market would have gone too had the Greater London Council in 1973 been allowed to push through its plans for a six-lane road parallel to the Strand, flanked by office blocks and high-rise hotels, but public outcry won the day.

Billingsgate Fish Market in 1961

Save has been campaigning for endangered historic buildings for nearly 40 years, with a focus on finding lively new uses and financially viable solutions. Thirty years ago we faced a similar challenge to the present one. In 1980 the City Corporation announced plans to move Billingsgate Fish Market, located on the river Thames near London Bridge, to the Isle of Dogs and said that the £8m cost had to be paid for by replacing the handsome Victorian market building with a new office block.

Save challenged the City Corporation and together with the then Richard Rogers Partnership, we produced an alternative scheme showing how the market could be kept for public use, and offices built on the nearby lorry park. When the City finally marketed the building on the basis of our scheme it raised £22m.

In 2000, the City Corporation invited Eric Reynolds, the market entrepreneur behind the revival of Greenwich and Spitalfields Markets, to put forward proposals for Smithfield General Market, but never pursued them.

The General Market had been built as a retail market in the 1880s and Reynolds proposed it should be revived partly as a food market on the lines of Borough Market south of the Thames. Instead, the City backed an office block proposal – selling a long lease to developers Thornfield.

At a public inquiry in 2007-8, Save and English Heritage, the Government’s adviser on historic buildings, secured the rejection of Thornfield’s plans. Ministers agreed that the General Market and Fish Market should be offered for sale on the open market before demolition was considered.

Thornfield then went into administration and, instead of being offered for sale, the market buildings were transferred with Thornfield’s assets for a consideration of £50m to AIMco Re Holdings (but ultimately controlled by FREP Holdings Canada).

English Heritage now did a curious volte-face, accepting plans by Henderson Global Investors (as agents of FREP Holdings Canada) to gut the General Market that would leave just three preserved frontages on the basis that there was no viable alternative.

Eric Reynolds is now offering to invest £28m in converting the General Market and Fish Market as public markets, with different groups of stallholders present on different days.

Working with London architect John Burrell, Save also wants to revive the former railway sidings beneath the General Market. This is an amazing netherworld, akin to the water cisterns beneath Istanbul. The idea is to create a London fashion hub to host the growing number of fashion shows in the capital.

Revived historic quarters have brought enjoyment as well as economic benefits to almost every city in Europe. A recent report by architects Allies and Morrison, with Strutt & Parker, has shown that repairs to historic buildings in high streets (including market buildings) can increase footfall by up to 6 per cent.

Map of the Smithfields Market

The whole Smithfield quarter, like Covent Garden before, has flourished by a process of natural regeneration, as independent shops and restaurants have moved into the premises of departing wholesalers.

In Covent Garden the clincher was the decision to preserve and reopen the market halls. Smithfield General Market offers the opportunity for London to lead Europe in showing how another group of market halls can be a catalyst for economic revival. But this is now an issue that can only be resolved in the forum of a public inquiry.

The playwright Alan Bennett draws a telling comparison with the great medieval church next to the market. “If you go to St Bartholomew’s and then walk through Smithfield, it is like walking from one cathedral to another. You wouldn’t pull down St Bartholomew’s, nor should you pull down Smithfield. Smithfield was the scene of many martyrdoms - this would be another.”

Smithfield market revamp ready for Crossrail and new homes

The controversial £160 million makeover of Smithfield Market will create the City of London's hottest neighbourhood with sensational new homes ready for the 2018 opening of Crossrail, says David Spittles

• Historic Smithfield Market is to become a new 'artisan food quarter', similar to Spitalfields and Borough
• The £160 million makeover will restore the market's listed Victorian exterior but sweep away the interior halls, replacing them with an internal public piazza below glass-clad office blocks
• The 2018 opening of Crossrail brings another advantage to new homes in the area with several station entrances to be built around the market

The halls of Smithfield market will become a new public piazza with food

courts, aimed at attracting crowds of Londoners and tourists, as has been

the experience at revamped Borough and Spitalfields markets

Historic Smithfield Market is set to follow the markets at Spitalfields and Borough as the Hart's Corner western end of the complex is set for a spectacular modern makeover that will bring a new “artisan” food quarter, boutiques and offices, and boost a central district that was hitherto off the radar of homebuyers and tourists.

 

Despite the passionate battle fought by conservation groups with big-name stars joining in, City planners have given approval for a £160 million revamp that will restore the market’s listed Victorian perimeter buildings but sweep away its market halls with their prized ironwork and vaulted roofs, replacing them with an internal public piazza below glass-clad office blocks - described as “pavilions”.

 

Known as Smithfield Quarter, the scheme is expected to be complete by 2018 to coincide with the opening of the neighbouring Crossrail station at Farringdon, which will be one of the capital’s key transport hubs and is due for a dramatic sevenfold increase in passengers.

 

The two projects are tipped to transform a commercial zone that has been part-derelict for at least a decade, yet which has been urban since the Middle Ages, with a colourful and lively history of supplying food to Londoners for 1,000 years.

 

Part of Smithfield Market's Victorian exterior

will survive the £160 million makeover

The run-down Victorian buildings occupy the Hart’s Corner western end of the market complex. While the battle for conservation still rages among many campaigners who oppose the changes, English Heritage is backing developer Henderson Global Investors, saying the scheme strikes “an appropriate balance between restoration and new development” and it welcomes the regeneration.

 

Similar controversy surrounded redevelopment of Spitalfields Market, where the offices for lawyers and bankers and a new shopping precinct dovetail with retained listed buildings. At Borough Market, now a thriving and much-visited area, a new viaduct for Thameslink trains cut through the site and entailed demolition of some original structures.

Smithfield has been supplying food to London for 1,000 years,

a tradition being reinvented by the new food quarter

But the quirky character and charm of these centuries-old sites endures through humanscale architecture, sensitive design and a mix of independent shops and stall holders. Both Borough and Spitalfields are among London’s top-10 visitor attractions and local homes have leapt in value.

 

Crossrail brings another dimension to Smithfield. There will be several new station entrances around the market and at least eight big mixed-use schemes are in the pipeline, including one above the listed station. An influx of office workers is likely to trigger demand for housing in an area that has been starved of new homes.

 

Estate agent Iain Currie was ahead of the game, opening a Thomson Currie branch in Smithfield two years ago. “There’s huge unsatisfied demand for homes in the area, and the redevelopment of the market is a big opportunity,” he says. “Smithfield is the only large wholesale market left in central London. Billingsgate and Covent Garden have moved.”

 

The market is surrounded by ancient St Bart’s Hospital, handsome Georgian townhouses and an open square that used to be the main site in London for the public execution of heretics and dissidents - Scottish nationalist William Wallace was hanged, drawn and quartered there in 1305.

 

The square is now lined with fashionable bars and bistros (some serving breakfasts from 4am when the market is alive with activity), while a few nightclubs offer an alternative to Soho. Lengendary club Turnmills, the first in the UK to win a 24-hour dance licence, has been bought for designer offices, a sign of the area’s changing profile. Smithfield’s boundary is part of the City’s “ring of steel” security cordon, which ensures a low crime rate.

The Green Boulevard

Architect Terry Farrell has designed a “public realm” masterplan for the area stretching from Farringdon to Tottenham Court Road, linking the two Crossrail stations with a “green boulevard”.

Sir Terry has also been commissioned by Royal Mail for the 12-acre Mount Pleasant depot, which will include a large number of homes, while Guardian Newspapers’ former headquarters in Farringdon Road is another likely residential conversion.

 

Analysis by Knight Frank suggests this changing City-fringe area, which includes Clerkenwell, could reach more than £1,700 a square foot by 2016, up from about £1,200 now, or at least £500,000 for a one-bedroom flat.

 

Spurred by Crossrail, developers are building boutique homes.  “Smithfield is no longer under the influence of Clerkenwell - it is acquiring its own identity as a proper neighbourhood and people want to put down roots,” adds Iain Currie. With its medieval bones still showing and the promise of a fresh new retail quarter, it is certainly one of the City’s hottest addresses.

Former Clerkenwell court said to be haunted sold by masons

A gruesome piece of Islington’s history – a reputedly haunted building where convict were whipped, sent to their deaths and transported to Australia – has been sold.

The Old Middlesex Sessions House in Clerkenwell Green has been the home of the Central London Masonic Centre since it purchased the building for £300,000 in 1979.

The masons are moving to a new building in Lever Street, Finsbury, but the secretive group refuses to reveal how much they have sold the building for or who they’ve sold it to – though a planning application has been put into Islington Council to turn it into a private members club.

Morbid

The sale represents the latest chapter in the long and often morbid history of the former courthouse, which was built in 1780 at a cost of £13,000.

The original building held two courtrooms, dungeons and accommodation for judges – a whipping post was added outside in about 1788.

In total, the building acted as a court of law for 140 years and earned a reputation as one of the strictest in the country – in one year alone 200 convicts were transported.

Prisoners were taken from the building through tunnels in the basement to Newgate Prison, where the Old Bailey now stands, and from there down the River Fleet to transport ships on the Thames.

A complex of tunnels under the building once linked the court not just to Newgate but also Clerkenwell House of Detention, the cellars of adjacent Marx Memorial Library and The Crown and The Horseshoe pubs.

Meanwhile prisoners who were to be executed were taken round the corner to the Hangman’s Cottage in Sans Walk where portable gallows were routinely employed.

And according Alice Merino, from the Clerkenwell and Islington Guides Assocation, a legend exists of a female ghost who haunts the building - sitting on the main stairs, crying and waiting for her boyfriend, who was presumably killed or sent to a penal colony.

Smithfield office plan ‘butchery’ - Man behind Camden Market says he can save Victorian site from demolition

Plans to save the Victorian Smithfield General Markets from demolition have been published by a heritage group and the man behind Camden Markets.

Eric Reynolds of Urban Space Management, which has also revitalised Spitalfields Market, and heritage group SAVE, have written to the City Corporation – the local authority for the buildings in Farringdon Street – arguing that it could be turned into a viable general market along the same lines as Covent Garden.

The market buildings in question were built between 1870 and 1890 and are part of a complex including the famous Smithfield Meat Market, which has been on the site for 800 years.

The market closed in the 1980s and has been empty ever since. In 2007 a public inquiry ruled that the General Market should not be demolished unless it was impossible to sell on the open market.

Now, however, it has been passed on by Deloitte – who came into ownership in the early 2000s after a previous property company went bust – to Henderson Global Inves­tors who have put in a planning application to knock down all but the perimeter, and build a tower block on the site.

Marcus Binney, president of SAVE, based in Cowcross Street, Clerkenwell, has des­cribed the plans as the “worst mutilation of a major Victorian landmark in 30 years”.

He added that the scheme has been described as “butchery” by the Victorian Society.

In his letter to SAVE Mr Reynolds said: “We have put forward proposals showing how the General Market buildings, if retained in their present form with the internal market halls, can generate an annual income in the order of £4.8m.

“We continue to be extremely interested in acquiring and running Smithfield General Market as a retail market. We consider this can be a viable and thriving operation bringing life and added business to the area as significant as other revived markets, notably Covent Garden, Borough Markets and Spitalfields.”

Heritage group SAVE said they are working closely with Urban Space Management to bring the market back into reuse, but that English Heritage won’t look at their proposals.

English Heritage, which is supporting the Henderson scheme, says it “recognises the concerns raised by SAVE”. But the body added: “The current proposal put forward by Henderson Global Inves­tors unites long-term sustainable restoration with the reuse of the Smithfield Western Market Buildings.

“Whilst it is true that the scale and height of the new office floors will result in moderate harm to the conservation area in certain views, these proposals have the potential to deliver economic, social and heritage benefits and it is these elements which the City of London Corporation must now balance.”

It added: “Earlier this year, English Heritage staff attended an event held by SAVE to launch their alternative proposals for Smithfield Market. At no time since that launch were we invited to discuss those proposals, until after the issuing of the latest press release which claimed we had already refused an invitation.

“We regret that SAVE finds it necessary to issue misleading information. However, English Heritage is willing to discuss their proposals and has responded to last week’s invitation.”

Petition launched against McAslan's Smithfield plans

SAVE Britain’s Heritage has launched an online petition against John McAslan & Partners’ contentious plans to overhaul Smithfield Market in central London.

According to project backer Henderson Global Investors, the scheme has been submitted for planning this week following ‘ongoing consultation and work with the City [of London] and English Heritage over the last two years’ and will transform the General Market, Fish Market and Red House into offices and shops.

However, despite amendments to initial designs revealed last October (AJ 12.10.2012), SAVE insists the revised McAslan plan is still a ‘thinly veiled application for an office development with only a nod towards conservation’ which will see the demolition of a ‘remarkable group of Victorian market hall interiors.’

The conservation group is now petitioning architecture and heritage minister Ed Vaizey to step in and is also demanding that recommendations from a public inquiry four years ago into the earlier, even more controverisal KPF proposals are adherred to (AJ 07.08.2008).

SAVE director Clem Cecil said: ‘A public inquiry into the proposed demolition of the general market in 2008 came down firmly in favour of the retention of the building.

‘The Inspector ruled that the buildings should be put on the open market, before demolition was allowed. Henderson’s must not be allowed to avoid this test.’

She added: ‘Henderson is making extraordinary claims about how much of the existing fabric it intends to retain. What they are actually doing is getting rid of about 90 per cent  of what is there – it is basically a new build within a skin.’

SAVE has also commissioned an alternative plan, drawn up by John Burrell of Burrell Foley Fischer, the scheme is being billed as a viable, conservation-led alternative to the Henderson concept for the unlisted market (AJ 14.11.2012).

Conservationists fight £160m plan to turn Smithfield into 'foodie Neal’s Yard’

A £160 million plan to turn the long-abandoned western end of Smithfield Market into a new artisan “foodie” destination for the City has been submitted to planners.

Developers want to restore the run-down Victorian buildings known as the General Market, Fish Market and Red House, which have stood derelict and threatened with demolition for at least a decade.

They hope to attract “Neal’s Yard-type” delis, butchers, bakers and cheese shops to a district currently overlooked by tourists and residents but associated with supplying food to Londoners for 1,000 years.

However, conservation campaigners have condemned the scheme — known as Smithfield Quarter — because it will also involve building office blocks up to six storeys high within the former market buildings.  They say it is a “de facto demolition” only possible because the brick structures are not listed — unlike the more famous wholesale meat market at the eastern end of the complex.

The Smithfield Quarter scheme is backed by fund management group Henderson Global Investors, which has a long lease on the buildings from the freeholder, the City of London Corporation, and says the inclusion of 170,000 square feet of office space is the only way of making it commercially viable.

The General Market perimeter would get 21 two-storey shops and restaurants with an internal public piazza beneath three office “pavilions”, with more shops and restaurants in the other buildings.

Geoff Harris, director of property development at Henderson, said: “Our proposals are a thorough and legitimate response to the challenges of putting these buildings back into proper, long-term, sustainable use.” The plans have been amended to ensure that they are more in keeping than earlier versions with the original historic design.  The proposal is likely to come before City planners this summer, with the opening in 2017.

Clementine Cecil, director of Save Britain’s Heritage, said the plan plays “fast and loose” with the history of the market buildings designed by former City surveyor Horace Jones. "We do not consider this a conservation project – it is a thinly veiled application for modern office blocks. "The interiors of this building, which was formerly an important public space, will all be removed, leaving only three sides of the original building."

The group’s “office-free” alternative involves turning the buildings back into traditional markets with basement exhibition and event space and it is considering submitting an alternative scheme to planners in the next month.

Prince Charles shocks commuters with ‘first trip on London Underground in 35 years’

The Prince of Wales travelled one stop from Farringdon to King’s Cross on the Metropolitan line with the Duchess of Cornwall as part of events marking the 150th anniversary on the Tube.

It is understood the last time the prince travelled on the Tube was in 1979, when he opened a section of the Jubilee line.

Farringdon station was chosen for the royal visit as it was the terminus of the original Metropolitan Railway that opened on January 10 1863, as part of the world’s first underground metro line.

Prince Charles was presented with a special Oyster card for the visit, even though he qualifies for free travel as a London resident aged over 60.

How does one eat that oyster? Prince Charles was given his own travel card for use on London's public transport

Charles and Camilla qualify for a Freedom Pass but they were given Oyster cards with £10 loaded onto them anyway

After finally figuring out how to use his Oyster card, Prince Charles made his way through the barriers at Farringdon Station

The Prince of Wales and Camilla spoke with long-serving London Underground staff and engineering trainees

There was plenty of space for the royal couple on the Tube train

The royal couple also spoke with engineers about the Crossrail project