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Urban Innovation and Philanthropy, New Perspectives on the Columbia Market, London

Emeline Houssard

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Completed in 1868 by architect Alfred Darbishire, Columbia Market is an astounding philanthropic project undertaken by Baroness Georgina Burdett-Coutts on behalf of the impoverished neighbourhoods of London's East End. Celebrated as much for its grandiose neo-Gothic architecture as for its spectacular economic failure, it has almost never been studied beyond the scope of an architectural approach, usually monographic or narrowed down to its decorations (Pevsner 1952; Schmiechen and Carls 1999; Lewis 2012; Jones 2016).
Firstly, this article refines the architectural analysis of the Columbia Market through a better consideration not only of its decorum but also of its structure. By doing so, it reveals Darbishire’s interest in other contemporary markets in London such as Covent Garden Market, Hungerford Market, Billingsgate Market and Spitalfields Market. Notwithstanding an outright economic collapse, Darbishire and Burdett-Coutt’s project is greeted with several echoes throughout Europe, of which this article offers the first comprehensive study. Mentioned in most of the contemporary journal articles, publications, and municipal reports devoted to neighbourhood covered markets, especially so in Berlin and Rome, it became an architectural model and a milestone in the European development of this type of building.
Second, this article reconsiders Columbia Market as an exemplary case of the inherently urban character of neighbourhood covered markets, focusing on its implementation and insertion within a larger project associating urban facilities, housing and transportation. More than an isolated philanthropic gesture in this deprived area of London, Columbia Market emerged as an extension to Columbia Square’s dwellings, built in 1862 for Burdett-Coutts on the advice of Charles Dickens. Other less known urban facilities were later built in order to rationalize the neighbourhood and to respond to the hygienist principles of the time. In addition, several railway projects integrating Columbia Market were put forward between 1870 and 1890, revealing both the interest in a new approach to urban planning and the transportation problems specific to this typology.
Considering the history of Columbia Market over the long term and the reasons for its failure thus contributes to a better understanding of its history and typology, as well as that of the neighbourhood and the city to which it belongs. The urban experiment associated with Columbia Market thus appears as a precursor of the programmes that only emerged in Europe after the Second World War, most notably the Lansbury Estate in London’s East End.

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Introduction

  • 1 Their relations became less friendly in the years 1855 to 1860, but Dickens still recommended that (...)
  • 2 Described at length in Chadwick’s 1842 report on sanitary conditions, quoted by Pevsner 1952: 70.

1“Gothic pastiche par excellence” for some (Smiechen and Carls 1999: 89), “oddity” (Girouard 1958: 812), Victorian “folly” (Pevsner 1952: 71) or even “white elephant” (Summerson 1958) of its time, Columbia Market has given rise to much commentary since it was built between 1864 and 1868. Its celebrity is due in part to its patron, Angela Burdett-Coutts, a wealthy heiress who is well known for her philanthropic initiatives—fountains, housing, a school (Stern 1966; Healey 1978; Lewis 2012)—and for her connections with her advisor and secretary, Charles Dickens.1 Burdett-Coutts commissioned the architect Henry Darbishire to design the market and had it built in Bethnal Green, one of the most impoverished neighbourhoods of London’s East End.2

  • 3 If Smith presents other private entrepreneurial attempts for retail markets at the same period (Smi (...)

2Many publications and articles have established a discourse about Columbia Market since its first mention in 1866 (“Miss Burdett Coutts’s New Market…” 1866: 795-796), which has not much changed up to the present day. They underline its original philanthropic origins,3 its gigantic scale, its Gothic Revival refinement, and lastly its commercial collapse.

  • 4 A whole chapter is devoted to the speculation surrounding covered markets during the second half of (...)
  • 5 This has been presented as the main reason for its failure since an anonymous article signed “One o (...)
  • 6 This idea was first voiced in an anonymous article “The Columbia Market” 1874: 28.
  • 7 As presented in an article signed J.W. (J.W. 1871: 604) and by the journalist Jerrold (Jerrold and (...)

3Indeed, this rather exceptional philanthropic context (Smith 1999: 83), contrasting with the speculative ambitions usually at play in the construction of such buildings4, has already been studied in a historical study of Victorian moralising philanthropy in architecture, as did Susan S. Lewis throughout her monographic study of Burdett-Coutts (Lewis 2012). Multiple studies (Pevsner 1952; Girouard 1958; Summerson 1958) have also underlined the uniqueness of the sumptuous Gothic style and the lavishness of the materials used, associating wrought iron, teak woodwork, coloured granite, terra cotta, white stone, and even marble trimmings. James Schmiechen and Kenneth Carls, who provide a broad overview of the history of British covered markets, continued to focus only on the neo-Gothic architecture of the Columbia Market, briefly mentioned in the "Architecture and design" section of their volume (Smiechen and Carls 1999: 89-90). As for its redundant economic failures, specialists have put forward various yet immutable explanations for this state of affairs (Lewis 2012: 275-6). The Gothic aesthetics and form of the market seemed inappropriate both for its commercial function and for the inhabitants of this poor neighbourhood.5 Located on a site traditionally viewed with suspicion by the local population, it was also not accessible by tramways.6 Finally, as inexpensive as the stalls were, the Columbia Market could not stand the competition of unregulated street markets, as argued in The Builder already in 1871.7

4Considering these thoughtful insights that I do not intend to contradict, this article intends to offer some new perspectives on the Columbia Market. Firstly, by examining its architectural program in light of the contemporary evolution of this building type not only in London but also in a broader European context. Secondly, by reconsidering its integration in a larger project including social housing and various urban facilities meant to meet the growing needs of the Nova-Scotia neighbourhood in Bethnal Green, which has never been studied in its wholeness, even in the monographic approaches devoted to Burdett-Coutts. Finally, this study allows for a renewed understanding of the Columbia Market’s posterity in Europe, by considering its dual role of model and counter-example for twentieth-century urban programs integrating covered markets.

Columbia Market: a well thought-out and audacious architectural project

An ambitious building

Figure 1: “Columbia-Square Market: North Front of the Market Hall, Mr. H. A. Darbishire, Architect.”

Figure 1: “Columbia-Square Market: North Front of the Market Hall, Mr. H. A. Darbishire, Architect.”
Zoom Original (png, 628k)

Source: The Builder 27 (1569), 1869: 347.

  • 8 The cost of the market was estimated at £150,000 in 1869 (G.T. 1869: 435) and at £250,000 in 1871 ( (...)
  • 9 B.O.L., Annual Report. 1833. quoted in “Covent Garden Market” 1970: 129-150.
  • 10 The proportion was calculated using the National Archives currency converter: http://www.nationalar (...)

5The first impression of the Columbia Market is of a palatial construction [Fig.1]. Its richly decorative architecture in expensive building materials and its diversified and complex architectural programme were said to have cost between £150,000 and £250,000,8 compared to Covent Garden Market, built some years before and estimated at £63,000,9 three times less.10 The ambitious nature of the architectural programme, however, intending to bring solutions to numerous problems which were specific to the Bethnal Green neighbourhood, makes the whole project even more exceptional.

6The building itself was large, measuring nearly 200 feet both in length and in width. It was designed to cater to the considerable demands of the neighbourhood’s population (Anonymous 1869: 137), which had exceeded 100,000 inhabitants since 1861 (Wohl 2002: Appendix II). Built ex nihilo in an East End slum area, Columbia Market was by no means as large as Covent Garden Market, opened in 1830, but not much smaller than the Hungerford Market, a produce wholesale market built in 1832, both of which had been built after the designs of the architect Charles Fowler and located in the heart of London on the site of an earlier market bearing the same name (Taylor 1968: 62).

7When it was opened, the Columbia Market building comprised 18 rental residences, 12 large shops with lodgings above in the east and west wings, 24 fully-equipped shops in the covered market to the north, 273 positions in the open halls to the south and at the centre of the covered market, and 400 stations for stalls, each of nearly 6 square feet, in the open market square [Fig. 2]. Each wing also had cellars and storehouses at the basement level (Anonymous 1869: 138). From the outset, the different parts of the market were devoted to different types of produce in order to rationalise the place’s overall organisation.

Figure 2: “Columbia Market, Bethnal Green.”

Figure 2: “Columbia Market, Bethnal Green.”
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Source: The Builder 27(1359), 1869: 138.

  • 11 By way of comparison, James Allen, a farmer and market gardener who occupied a stall at Spitalfield (...)

8The aim of grouping together different sorts of traders inside the market building is one that was underlined by the architect himself and by contemporary observers. The different sorts of stations and shops and the association of some of the shops with lodgings supposedly corresponded with four “classes” of traders. In this way, Darbishire tried to rationalise their place in the urban setting. First of all, in its east and west wings, the building accommodated the wealthier “first-class” dealers with their shops on the ground floor and residences occupying the two floors above. These residences could comprise up to nine rooms and, with the shop, their annual rent was fixed at £52 and 10 shillings in 1869.11 The central archway provided further lodgings, intended originally for municipal employees (Anonymous 1869: 138). The north side included a covered market, divided into three naves and comprising some 80 small shops, lined in marble and each one with a fireplace, a sink, a counter and a desk. There were also more simple stalls, protected from the elements. Opposite this covered market, cheaper stalls were available for rent in a covered open hall. Last of all, the central open-air quadrangle was intended for the “class” of costermongers and hawkers, itinerant street sellers who were increasingly the object of municipal attention, preoccupied since the 1840s by their disorderly occupation of London’s thoroughfares (Jones 2016: 63 et seq.).

  • 12 Indeed, after the 1820s roofed St. Johns Market in Liverpool, market halls progressively abandoned (...)
  • 13 “Miscellanea, Columbia Market” 1869: 1035. This structural modification took place at the same time (...)

9At Columbia Market, the architect was concerned to maintain order in this open-air space and used patterns of blue and red granite to delineate circulation spaces and the stations designed for these costermongers (Anonymous 1869: 138). By this date, the choice of an architectural layout with an enclosed open-air quadrangle could be seen as already obsolete12. As a matter of fact, a metal roof was erected to cover it as early as 1871 by the Moorgate firm of Hemming and Co.13 But this oddity could also be perceived as a way to reach the costermongers’ habits by maintaining an open-space for trade, thus providing an even cheaper offer of stall renting.

An architectural program following the latest London precepts for covered markets

10The fact that the market was rapidly abandoned by its users and turned into a commercial failure suggests a kind of amateurism on the part of Darbishire and Burdett-Coutts, who had never designed a market before and who would not repeat the experience afterwards. But here we must replace the building in its context to understand how the architect intended to synthesise and harmonise the choices, advantages and functions of other markets built in London before his own.

11Unexpectedly, the building did not adopt the Neoclassical or Neo-Renaissance vocabulary that was by then in vogue in London for market buildings, preferring Gothic Revival architecture and decoration. This preference must have been voiced by Burdett-Coutts, whose projects have always favoured this aesthetic advocated among others by Ruskin, as demonstrated by St Stephen’s Church in Westminster, the Housing ‘Holly Village’ in Highgate or two fountains in Regent and Victoria Park (Lewis 2012: 199, 264, 279). On the other hand, Darbishire adopted a distinct ornamental vocabulary for the Peabody Trust buildings.

  • 14 The agora is the public place where a market take place in Greek Antiquity, whereas macella is a ro (...)
  • 15 See, for example, the Pouzolles Market dating from the Flavian period, in Gros 1996: 458 et seq.
  • 16 An aedicula with a roof sheltering either a fountain, a statue or even a market stall in the agora (...)

12Yet the Columbia Market’s ground plan belongs to a long-established typological tradition. With its central fountain, the structure may be seen as a latter-day version of the Greek agora or the Roman macella14, both organised around a courtyard with internal arcades and peripheral shops.15 In London, the central tholos16 is replaced by a large lamp surrounded by four granite washing basins (Anonymous 1869: 138), as was the case at the Saint-Germain Market in Paris, dating from 1810 and with a simpler programme. Such a type was also to be found later in Great Britain, from the 1820s to the 1850s, for instance at the Billingsgate Market and the Hungerford Market in London, or at the city market of Bolton.

  • 17 In the 1860s, many market halls in Europe still didn’t have cellars, according to Risch 1867: 359.
  • 18 “We do not recommend such arrangements, on the contrary, since the hygiene of the inhabitants will (...)
  • 19 Letter of 18 April 1852 to Angela Burdett-Coutts (Johnson 1953: 199). Dickens anticipates the Housi (...)
  • 20 Like the town hall of Wokingham, Berkshire, for instance, built in 1860.

13Like other London markets, Columbia Market was characterised by its corner turrets, occupied by dwellings and a tavern. The shops, with their independent basement cellars17 and dwellings above the ground-floor, offered the same vertical organisation. The inclusion of dwellings in market building was quite frequent in British markets, although Victor Baltard was disparaging about this.18 But the idea was in keeping with the recommendations of Charles Dickens, favourable to large residential buildings, as seen in his correspondence with Angela Burdett-Coutts.19 Darbishire also erected a bell tower, or campanile, already used at Farringdon Market in 1829 and at Billingsgate Market, completed in 1853 after the designs of the architect James Bunstone Bunning, representing John Jay. The motif of the tower reveals an ambition to turn new buildings such as markets into architectural landmarks, structuring the surrounding urban space. In many smaller towns, the covered market and the town hall could be accommodated in the same building,20 in the tradition of late medieval markets such as Bruges’s.

  • 21 It was probably a filtration system employing bone char, already in use at Columbia Square under th (...)
  • 22 The importance of this water supply is perhaps not to be overrated, however: in London, “from the m (...)

14Darbishire also paid attention to the hygiene challenges faced by a market, regarding especially the water supply and quality. By taking inspiration from the cisterns hidden beneath the rafters of the central gallery of Covent Garden Market that provided its monumental fountain with water (Anonymous 1831: 271), at Columbia Market, Darbishire installed large water tanks in the top storeys of the east and west wings which supplied the market and the dwellings. A filtration system was even attached to these tanks.21 The architect also planned for numerous bathrooms, water-closets22 and indoor fountains to supplement the grand central fountain (Anonymous 1869: 13).

Echoes throughout Europe

15Despite its failure, Columbia Market nonetheless acquired a reputation that went beyond the borders of Great Britain. It became an architectural model and one of town-planning’s most celebrated counter-examples in Europe.

  • 23 London Metropolitan Archives, CLA/009/01/026, 1846.

16The history of covered markets is very much a history of architectural exchanges and transfers, particularly encouraged by study trips promoted by municipal authorities. One of the first of the kind was conducted by Victor Baltard, the future city architect and designer of Les Halles de Paris and his colleagues from the Prefecture de la Seine or from the city’s markets department, leading to the publication of a report in 1846 (Anger, Baltard and Husson [1846] 1994). This report was immediately translated into English and sent to James Bunstone Bunning, architect to the City of London, on 4 August 1846. This suggests the interest aroused by Baltard’s survey.23 Similar voyages were organised subsequently, notably to Berlin in 1868, leading to the publication of hefty monographs, in which the Columbia Market always comes to occupy some prominent pages. In his report published only in 1881, Julius Hennicke, sent on a mission by councillor Theodor Risch for the magistrates of the Berlin municipal council, reproduced an elevation of the façade of Columbia Market and a detailed ground plan with an explanatory key (Hennicke 1881: pl. 2) [Fig.3].

Figure 3: “Columbia Markt in Bethnal-Green London”.

Figure 3: “Columbia Markt in Bethnal-Green London”.
Zoom Original (jpeg, 516k)

Source: Hennicke, Julius. Mittheilungen über Markthallen in Deutschland, England, Frankreich, Belgien und Italien, Berlin: Ernst & Korn, 1881. Pl. 2

17This plan, probably redrawn after the one published in The Builder (Anonymous 1869: 146), was also published in the Handbuch der Architektur (Durm Ende Schmitt Wagner 1884: 351), accompanied by another engraving from The Builder (Anonymous 1869: 147). The same illustration also reached Italy. The engineer Marc’Aurelio Boldi, in the first edition of his synthesis on covered markets in Europe, reproduces the same plan as in the Handbuch (Boldi 1893: Fig.1). Although the captions in German have been removed, the indication ‘Markthalle’ still legible on the nave of the main building of the Columbia site demonstrates that it is the same engraving. Although a direct line of affiliation from the Columbia Market is not necessarily present, in both British and German cities of the time there was a host of market projects combining shops and dwellings, often with a tavern or a restaurant, even if the model centered on an open-air marketplace, of which Columbia Market was a belated example, was progressively being supplanted.

From architectural gesture to innovative urban programme

18The history of Columbia Market is interesting not only for Darbishire’s architecture, but also for the gradual and empirical elaboration of an overall programme associating the market building with various urban facilities, with correlated housing programs in the surroundings and transportation. Seen this way, the project illustrates what was at stake in the typology of the market during the nineteenth century and shows an operation undertaken on the scale of a whole neighbourhood, which was highly innovative in the London of its time.

Market hall and housing for a new neighbourhood

Figure 4: “Clock Tower, Columbia Square, Bethnal Green, MR. H. A. Darbishire, Architect.”

Figure 4: “Clock Tower, Columbia Square, Bethnal Green, MR. H. A. Darbishire, Architect.”
Zoom Original (png, 380k)

Source: The Builder 21 (s.n.), 1863: 10.

19From the outset, in 1869, the surface of the plot of land acquired for the project allowed for the elaboration of a project which comprised the market, housing and new streets (Anonymous 1869: 138). The compulsory purchases necessary for the construction of the market, and the building’s isolation, gave rise to criticism from local tradesmen at this date, considering them unnecessary and detrimental for their business (Anonymous 1869: 754). When it was built, Columbia Market did not emerge as an standalone new public building in the neighbourhood but as an extension to Columbia Square [Fig.4], a building comprising 83 lodgings commissioned by Angela Burdett-Coutts from Darbishire and completed as early as 1862. The two buildings next door to each other created an ensemble, clearly identifiable by the Gothic design of their façades and by the use of similar building materials, playing on the colours of the yellow and blue bricks (Lewis 2012: 275). The Columbia Market was built then partly to satisfy the food supply needs of the inhabitants living nearby and partly to provide more housing.

20From 1862, Columbia Square had been designed to offer lodgings for even the poorest inhabitants of Bethnal Green, unlike most examples of comparable social housing built at the time (Wohl 2002: 181). Columbia Square marks a turning point between isolated acts of philanthropy, such as those of Burdett-Coutts amongst other figures like Sidney Waterlow, James Hartnoll or the Baron Rothschild, and the emergence of major social housing trusts and companies, such as the Peabody Trust, the Sutton Trust or the East End Dwellings Company (Wohl 2002).

21Between 1871 and 1872 Angela Burdett-Coutts gave other pieces of land along Columbia Road, not far from her market, to the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company which built more housing, still in the Gothic style, in order to improve the neighbourhood. Indirectly, these Leopold Buildings would bring more potential customers for the market (Anonymous 1871: 835). Other residential buildings were also planned at a later date, along with the creation of a tramway line, but in the end this project was abandoned (Anonymous 1875: 239).

22In keeping with late eighteenth-century traditions of urban hygiene, two garden squares were also planned in the neighbourhood. Planted with plane trees and flowering shrubs, the first one, of triangular shape, gave onto the east façade of the market and onto Columbia Road (Anonymous 1869: 137). The second was probably designed to replace the first one, threatened by a tramway project. It was situated between Columbia Road and Hackney Road, near the new residences (Anonymous 1873: 50).

A response to the commercial habits of the neighbourhood

23Confronted with the failure of the market to attract the small itinerant dealers, the costermongers, Angela Burdett-Coutts made a further effort, yet unaccounted for by previous studies, to understand the commercial habits of Bethnal Green tradesmen and inhabitants.

24Indeed, she commissioned an ensemble of stalls and stables [Fig.5] to accommodate these dealers’ wares, barrows and horses (Anonymous 1877: 1126, 1128). Situated on a plot north of the market, it was thought up by Lewis Harrison, the manager of the market appointed by Burdett-Coutts. It was a vast construction of unpretentious appearance with a metal structure and wooden cladding, designed and built under the direction of the architect A.B. Hutching by the building firm of Whitford and Co. This new construction completed the market’s facilities and helped rationalise its space by offering costermongers spaces to store their wares and a place for their mounts. In order to address the major concern of hygiene, these stalls and stables were ventilated by larges opening between roofs and doors, while isolated manure-pits were created and drinking taps and washing utensils were furnished. If market halls and ‘unauthorized’ street markets were often opposed to one another (Jones 2016), Burdett-Coutts’ initiative appears as a unique attempt to match ancient costermongers’ habits with more rationalized urban structures. Aiming to adapt more closely to the costermongers’ real requirements, the stalls and stables abandoned the architectural ostentation which had given rise to criticism at Columbia Market (Anonymous 1877: 1126, 1128). This attention to the needs of the most underprivileged sections of the population was once again demonstrated at the end of the 1880s, when a soup kitchen was set up in Columbia Square (Anonymous 1887: 69 et seq.).

Figure 5: “Stables and Stores for Costermongers, near Columbia Market, Hackney Road. Erected for the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.”

Zoom Original (png, 335k)

Source: The Builder 31 (1814), 1877: 1128.

The neighbourhood’s connections to London’s networks

25Columbia Market was conceived for the inhabitants of Bethnal Green and on the scale of that neighbourhood. But it was not easily accessible for traders and did not enjoy the geographical advantages of Billingsgate Market, for example, about three and a half miles away, which benefited from a direct access to the Thames. This privileged location contributed to the abandonment of Columbia Market, at least according to the hypothesis put forward by Charles Dickens in 1879 (Dickens 1879: 38). Various projects aiming to give Columbia Market rail or tramway connections were put forward between 1870 and 1890 to compensate for this poor accessibility, following the precedent of the railways and tramways established during the 1840s to connect London’s main covered markets (Smiechen Carls 1999: 158-159).

Figure 6: Plan of proposed tramway from the Great Eastern Railway at Nottingham Street to Columbia Market overlaid upon the O.S. one inch to five feet Skeleton plan, Sheet VII.37 & 47. (detail), Richard Hassard, 1, Westminster Chambers, 14 April 1871

Figure 6: Plan of proposed tramway from the Great Eastern Railway at Nottingham Street to Columbia Market overlaid upon the O.S. one inch to five feet Skeleton plan, Sheet VII.37 & 47. (detail), Richard Hassard, 1, Westminster Chambers, 14 April 1871
Zoom Original (jpeg, 475k)

Source: London Metropolitan Archives, COL/SVD/PL/09/0022, Columbia Market and Railways, Parliamentary Deposited Plans, November 1874.

  • 24 “Miss Burdett-Coutts, who built Columbia Market, has, it is said, given hearty and substantial enco (...)

26In 1870 Columbia Market was converted to become a wholesale fish market,24 a development intended to find some usefulness for the deserted building and also to give some relief to Billingsgate Market which was then reaching saturation. For this conversion, the market’s central quadrangle was roofed over with a lightweight structure in iron and glass. Gas lighting was installed and the granite flooring covered in asphalt. A project then involved constructing a railway connection to the Great Eastern Railway, less than a mile away, to offer direct access to Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Harwich and other ports on the east coast (Anonymous 1870: 49). At this date, most of London’s wholesale markets had direct rail links to the surrounding provinces. Sometimes the railway was inside the market itself: the roof of the Borough Market was amputated in 1862 to make way for the passage of the South Eastern Railway (Webster 1997: 13).

  • 25 “Miscellanea, Columbia Market” 1871: 595. This information is also given by Charles Dickens (Dicken (...)

27The Baroness undertook to put up the £60,000 estimated to be necessary for this project.25 The bill for an initial project, which was voted on 14 April 1871 but subsequently contested (Anonymous 1873: 405), proposed to join up the market to the railway station from the crossroads between Hackney Road and Columbia Road (formerly Crabtree Row) [Fig.6]. Two routes were subsequently proposed, either by Wellington Row or via Gosset Street, turning at Squirries Street, crossing Bethnal Green and continuing as far as Nottingham Street (present-day Valence Road) in the immediate vicinity of the station. In 1873, after the market had been handed over to the London Corporation, another route was suggested making the tramway arrive directly opposite the market at the site of the garden. A return to the first project was then put forward, meeting the approval of The Builder (Anonymous 1873: 405). But in 1874 Horace Jones, one of the city’s architects, estimated the cost of joining up the Great Eastern Railway to Nottingham Street to amount to £34,500, when the earliest estimates had spoken of only £10,000 (Anonymous 1874: 28). The cost, far in excess of what had been anticipated at first, and the still highly hypothetical commercial success of the venture apparently discouraged the Corporation of London, which gave the market back to Burdett-Coutts in 1875.

Figure 7: Plan of Railway n°1 project for the Columbia Market (detail), November 1874.

Figure 7: Plan of Railway n°1 project for the Columbia Market (detail), November 1874.
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Source: London Metropolitan Archives, MR/U/P/1475, Columbia Market and Railways, Parliamentary Deposited Plans, November 1874.

  • 26 London Metropolitan Archives, MR/U/P/1475, 1884.
  • 27 London Metropolitan Archives, MBW/2649/34/01, 1884-1885.
  • 28 According to different witnesses, including James Allen, a farmer and market gardener who had a sta (...)
  • 29 London Metropolitan Archives, COL/RMD/PA/05/02/1118, 1890.

28From 1877 to 1885 the market was for some time occupied by the American Meat Market, which put the projected tramway connection on hold until 188426 and 1885, when a new project [Fig.7] was elaborated with the North London Railway Company.27 But probably on account of competition from Spitalfields Market, which had recently been rebuilt,28 all the projects for railway connections were finally abandoned between 1889 (Anonymous 1889: 397) and 1890.29 All hope of making Columbia Market a going concern disappeared.

Conclusion

  • 30 As presented in an article by J.W. 1871: 604 and by the journalist Jerrold in 1872 (Jerrold and Dor (...)

29Angela Burdett-Coutts’s Columbia Market for Bethnal Green is clearly a unique operation, both in terms of its scale and its philanthropic character. Far more than an extravagant building, it is a project which aims at integrating all the traders, including those usually rejected to the margins of the market or to the surrounding streets. The market is part of a larger development which concerns a whole neighbourhood and brings together housing, transport and social facilities. With defaults in its empirical approach, it mostly lacks, like private retail covered markets in London, political commitment to regulate markets. Indeed, the main reason of the Columbia Market’s commercial collapse may well be the enduring success of unauthorized street markets: as inexpensive as the market’s facilities could be, they would never become competitive with “illegal” and therefore free occupation of the streets, as was underlined as early as 1871 in The Builder30. Without excluding the other explanations provided for this state of affairs (Lewis 2012: 275-76), the ambitious and necessary changes that were made or planned subsequently to the Columbia Market and its neighbourhood came too late to turn it into a success. Each and every time, Columbia Market was abandoned both by tradespeople and clients.

30Despite its failure, Columbia Market nonetheless acquired a reputation that went beyond the borders of Great Britain. It became both an architectural model and one of the most celebrated town planning counter-examples in Europe. The integration of Columbia Market into a town-planning project encompassing the whole surrounding neighbourhood is exceptional and seems to announce some of the ambitious urban experiments that were undertaken after the Second World War. Such is the case of the Lansbury Estate, built from 1948 to 1951 and presented at the Festival of Britain in 1951 as the first reconstruction project accomplished by the Ministry of Work and the London County Council (Cowan 2014: 177). This project, undertaken as part of the ‘Live Architecture’ exhibition, covered a thirty-acre site divided into six zones comprising housing and a vast programme of public, religious, educational and commercial facilities [Fig. 8&9].

Figure 8: Plan of the Lansbury Estate with the covered market, 1972.

Figure 8: Plan of the Lansbury Estate with the covered market, 1972.
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Source: London Metropolitan Archives, LCC Photograph Library, SC PHL 02 0819 72 5946.

Figure 9: Lansbury Market with the clock tower, Chrisp Street Market, 1954.

Figure 9: Lansbury Market with the clock tower, Chrisp Street Market, 1954.
Zoom Original (png, 444k)

Source: London Metropolitan Archives, LCC Photograph Library, SC PHL 02 0942 1515

  • 31 London Metropolitan Archives, GLC/AR/G/22/008/1, 1949-1960.
  • 32 London Metropolitan Archives GLC/AR/HB/02/0588, 1948. The significance of the building was also und (...)
  • 33 Columbia Market and its neighbourhood were affected by the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947. D (...)

31The commercial section (VII), designed by the architect Frederick Gibberd and built by the firm of Leslie and Co, Ltd., associated small residential buildings above ground-floor arcades with shops, a covered market, an open-air market and a small garden with a campanile-clock tower.31 The covered market, demolished in 1993 (Harwood 2001: 149), also comprised sanitary facilities and storage spaces. For the designers, the idea was to rationalise the existing street market. At the precise moment when Columbia Market was coming to the fore in discussions about its preservation as heritage,32 after a modernisation project had envisaged the demolition of the Columbia Market,33 the programme of Lansbury Market, on a smaller scale and amidst different buildings, proved to be similar to the one defined for Columbia Market a century earlier.

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Bibliography

Primary sources

Archive documents

London Metropolitan Archives

CLA/009/01/026, France - Préfecture du Département de la Seine. 1846. Report of the Public Markets in England Belgium, Holland and Spain, Paris: s.ed., 40 p.

COL/RMD/PA/05/02/1118, Corporation of London, Columbia Market Railways (Abandonment) Act. For the abandonment of the railways and new street authorised by the Columbia Market Act 1885, see 53/54 Vic c.3 (private), 1890.

GLC/AR/HB/01/1215 Columbia-market

GLC/AR/HB/02/0588, Ministry of Town and Country Planning, County of London, Bethnal Green Metropolitan Borough, “Provisional List of Buildings of Architectural or Historic Interest for Consideration in Connection with the Provisions of Section 30 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947”, March 1948.

GLC/AR/G/22/008/1, Lansbury Estate development, Erection of Shopping Centre and Market Square, 1949-1960.

GLC/AR/G/22/008/4, Lansbury Estate development, Erection of Shopping Centre and Market Square, 1949-1960.

LCC/CL/TP/02/105, First Review of Administrative County of London Development Plan, 1961.

MBW/2649/34/01, The Metropolitan Board of Works, Columbia Market and Railways, 1884-1885.

MR/U/P/1475, Middlesex Sessions of the Peace: Enrolment, Registration and Deposit, Columbia Market and Railways, 1884.

Published documents

Anger, Victor Baltard and A. Husson. Rapport sur les marchés publics en Angleterre, en Belgique, en Hollande et en Allemagne / Préfecture du département de la Seine. Paris: Vinchon, imprimeur de la Préfecture de la Seine, 1846.

Baltard, Victor. Complément à la monographie des Halles de Paris. In Baltard, les Halles de Paris, textes, Victor Baltard, Maxime du Camp ; présentation, Patrice de Moncan ; plans de V. Baltard et F. Callet. Ed. Patrice de Moncan. Paris: Éditions de l’Observatoire, [1863] 1994.

Boldi, Marc’Aurelio. Per i mercati coperti: : pour les marchés couverts - for the covered markets - um die Markthallen. Monografia tecnico-economica, Roma: Tipografia Pratellu Centenari, 1893.

Boldi, Marc’Aurelio. Per i mercati coperti: pour les marchés couverts, for the covered markets, über die Markthallen. Turin: Camilla e Bertolero di N. Bertolero, 1899.

Charity and Food Report of the Special Committee of the Charity Organisation Society upon Soup Kitchens, Children's Breakfasts and Dinners and Cheap Food Supply. London: Longmans, Green, & Co., Paternoster Row, 1887.

“Columbia Market.” The Architect 11-12 (n.p.), 1874: 28.

“Columbia Market, Bethnal-Green.” The Builder 27 (1359), 1869: 146-147.

“Costermongers Stables and Stalls, Columbia Market.” The Builder 31 (1814), 1877: 1126 and 1128.

“Covent Garden Market.” In Survey of London 36, Covent Garden. Ed. F. H. W. Sheppard. London: London City Council, 1870. 129-150. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol36/pp129-150

“Description of the New Market of Covent Garden, London by the Conductor.” The Gardener's Magazine and Register of Rural and Domestic Improvement 7 (32), 1831: 254-277.

Dickens, Charles (Jr.). “Among the Markets - In Two Parts. Part II.” All the Year Round 7 (176), 1872: 468-471.

Dickens, Charles (Jr.). Dickens's Dictionary of London. London: C. Dickens & Evans, 1879.

Durm, Josef, Ende, Hermann, Schmitt, Eduard,Wagner, Heinrich, Handbuch der Architektur. Unter Mitwirkung von Fachgenossen. Vierter Theil:Entwerfen, Anlage und Einrichtung der Gebäude. 3. Halb-Band: Gebäude für landwirtschaftliche und Approvisionirungs-Zwecke. Darmstadt: J. PH. Diehl’s Verlag, 1884.

“The Future of the Columbia Market.” The Builder 33 (1675), 1875: 239.

G.T. “A Model Market.” London Society 15 (217), 1869: 433-437.

Hennicke, Julius. Mittheilungen über Markthallen in Deutschland, England, Frankreich, Belgien und Italien. Berlin: Ernst & Korn, 1881.

J.W. “The Movement in Covent Garden Market.”, The Builder 29 (1487) 1871: 604.

Jerrold, Blanchard, Gustave Doré. London, A Pilgrimage. London: Grant, 1872.

“The Markets: Leadenhall, Billingsgate, and Columbia.” The Builder 29 (1473), 1871: 323.

“Miscellanea.” Mechanics Magazine 92, 1870: 49.

“Miscellanea.” Mechanics Magazine 92, 1870: 140.

“Miscellanea, Columbia Market.” The Builder 27 (1403), 1869: 1035.

“Miscellanea, Columbia Market.” The Builder 29 (1486), 1871: 595.

“Miscellanea, Ornamentation of a New Recreation Ground in Bethnal Green.” The Builder 31 (1563), 1873: 50.

“Miscellanea, The Columbia Fish market.” The Builder 29 (1498), 1871: 835.

“Miscellanea, The Columbia Fish Market Tramway Bill.” The Builder 31 (1581), 1873: 405.

“Miss Coutts’s Market, Bethnal-Green.” The Builder 27 (1359), 1869: 138.

“Miss Coutts’s Market and the Tradesmen.” The Builder 27 (1389), 1869: 754.

“Miss Burdett Coutts’s New Market, Bethnal-Green.” The Builder 24 (1238), 1866: 795-796.

“Private Bills and Session of 1890.” The Builder 57 (2444), 1889: 397.

Risch, Theodor. Bericht über Markthallen in Deutschland, Belgien, Frankreich, England und Italien. Berlin: Selbstverlage des Magistrats, Wolf Peiser Verlag, 1867.

Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls. First Report of the Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, containing the First Report of the Commissioners, together with the Report by Me. Charles I. Elton, QC., M.P., Commissioner, and Me. B.F.C., Costelloe, Assistant Commissioner, on Charters and Records relating to the History of Fairs and Markets in the United Kingdom. London: Printed for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1889.

“Sewage and Water Supply.” The Builder 24 (1239), 1866: 817.

Secondary Sources

Architekten- und Ing.-Verein Berlin, ed. Berlin und seine Bauten Teil 8. Bauten für Handel und Gewerbe Bd A. Handel. Berlin u.a.: Ernst & Sohn, 1978.

Cowan, Susanne. “A Model for the Nation: Exhibiting Post-war Reconstruction at the Festival of Britain, 1951.” In Exhibitions and the Development of Modern planning Culture. Ed. Robert Freestone, Marco Amati. Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. 177-189.

Frioux, Stéphane, Patrick Fournier and Sophie Chauveau. Hygiène et santé en Europe de la fin du XVIIIe siècle aux lendemains de la Première Guerre mondiale. Paris: SEDES, 2011.

Girouard, Mark. “A Victorian Oddity in Danger.” Country Life 123, 1958: 812-813.

Gros, Pierre. L'architecture romaine du début du IIIe siècle av. J.-C. à la fin du Haut-Empire, Les monuments publics. Paris: Picard, 1996.

Harwood, Elain. “Lansbury.” Twentieth-Century Architecture 5, 2001: 140-154. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41861917

Healey, Edna. Lady Unknown: The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts. London: Bloomsbury, 1978.

Jones, Peter T. A. “Redressing Reform Narratives: Victorian London's Street Markets and the Informal Supply Lines of Urban Modernity.” The London Journal 41 (1), 2016: 60-81. DOI: 10.1179/1749632215Y.0000000013

Johnson, Edgar, ed. Letters from Charles Dickens to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1841-1865. London: Jonathan Cape, 1953.

Lewis, Susan S. The Artistic and Architectural Patronage of Angela Burdett-Coutts. PhD diss., U. College of London, 2012.

Morrison, Kathryn A. English Shops and Shopping: an Architectural History, New Haven: Yale UP, 2004.

Pevsner, Nikolaus. The Buildings of England, BE 6, London, except the cities of London and Westminster. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1952.

Smith, Colin Stefen.The Market Place and the Market's Place in London, c. 1660 -1840. PhD diss., U. College of London, 1999.

Smiechen, James and Kenneth Carls. The British Market Hal, a Social and Architectural History. New Haven, London: Yale UP, 1999.

Stamp, Gavin. “The ‘grim’ social housing that has proved more robust than what followed it.” Apollo Magazine, 2016. URL: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/built-to-last-george-peabodys-victorian-social-housing/

Stern, Walter M. “The baroness’s market: the history of a noble failure.” The Guildhall miscellany 2 (8), 1966: 353-366.

Taylor, Jeremy. “Charles Fowler (1792-1867): A Centenary Memoir.” Architectural History 11, 1968: 57-74, 108-112. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1568322

Webster, Dominic et al. An Illustrated History of Borough Market. Southwark: Trustees of the Borough Market, 1997.

Wohl, Anthony S. The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London. New Brunswick, London: Transaction Publishers, 2002.

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Notes

1 Their relations became less friendly in the years 1855 to 1860, but Dickens still recommended that she should commission the architect Henry Darbishire to design the market, and suggested tenement buildings rather than a succession of individual workers’ houses. See the letter of 18 April 1852 to Angela Burdett-Coutts (Johnson 1953, 199).

2 Described at length in Chadwick’s 1842 report on sanitary conditions, quoted by Pevsner 1952: 70.

3 If Smith presents other private entrepreneurial attempts for retail markets at the same period (Smith 1999: 83), Susan S. Lewis demonstrate the few benefits made by Burdett-Coutts (Lewis 2012: 278).

4 A whole chapter is devoted to the speculation surrounding covered markets during the second half of the nineteenth century in the work of synthesis published on this architectural type by the engineer Marc’Aurelio Boldi (Boldi 1899: 271-278).

5 This has been presented as the main reason for its failure since an anonymous article signed “One of the people” in The Builder 27 (1370), 1869: 370-371.

6 This idea was first voiced in an anonymous article “The Columbia Market” 1874: 28.

7 As presented in an article signed J.W. (J.W. 1871: 604) and by the journalist Jerrold (Jerrold and Doré 1872: 151-52), summed up by Kathryn A. Morrison (Morrison 2008: 120), before being further demonstrated by Peter T. Jones (Jones 2016: 73-75), who only delivers an urbanistic approach through the prism of street markets.

8 The cost of the market was estimated at £150,000 in 1869 (G.T. 1869: 435) and at £250,000 in 1871 (“The Columbia Market” 1871: 323). Covent Garden Market had cost £63,000 in 1830.

9 B.O.L., Annual Report. 1833. quoted in “Covent Garden Market” 1970: 129-150.

10 The proportion was calculated using the National Archives currency converter: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/. The Metropolitan Meat Market, a gigantic wholesale market three times larger than the Columbia Market and opened in the same year, cost “only” £200,000.

11 By way of comparison, James Allen, a farmer and market gardener who occupied a stall at Spitalfields Market, paid £52 a year in rights and tolls (Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, 1889: 92).

12 Indeed, after the 1820s roofed St. Johns Market in Liverpool, market halls progressively abandoned the central open-air structure. See Smiechen and Carls 1999: 72-77. In London, Charles Fowler already planned to cover the central area of the Hungeford Market with a metal roof in 1835. The Smithfield Market, almost built along the Columbia Market, also has a delicate iron and glass structure.

13 “Miscellanea, Columbia Market” 1869: 1035. This structural modification took place at the same time as the market was converted into a wholesale fish market, a change approved by Angela Burdett-Coutts.

14 The agora is the public place where a market take place in Greek Antiquity, whereas macella is a roman food market whose name and form is attested at least since 240-220 B.C.

15 See, for example, the Pouzolles Market dating from the Flavian period, in Gros 1996: 458 et seq.

16 An aedicula with a roof sheltering either a fountain, a statue or even a market stall in the agora or macella.

17 In the 1860s, many market halls in Europe still didn’t have cellars, according to Risch 1867: 359.

18 “We do not recommend such arrangements, on the contrary, since the hygiene of the inhabitants will inevitably suffer from the proximity of foodstuffs accumulated in the same place, and the market will suffer from inadequate ventilation, on account of the proximity of the dwellings.” Baltard [1863] 1994: 138.

19 Letter of 18 April 1852 to Angela Burdett-Coutts (Johnson 1953: 199). Dickens anticipates the Housing and Town-Planning Act of 1909, which forbade the building of back-to-back housing.

20 Like the town hall of Wokingham, Berkshire, for instance, built in 1860.

21 It was probably a filtration system employing bone char, already in use at Columbia Square under the surveillance of Doctor Frankland, who took regular measurements of the water. “Sewage and Water Supply” 1866: 817.

22 The importance of this water supply is perhaps not to be overrated, however: in London, “from the middle of the nineteenth century, nine tenths of households had contracts for water supply with a distribution company.” Frioux, Fournier and Chauveau 2011 : 184.

23 London Metropolitan Archives, CLA/009/01/026, 1846.

24 “Miss Burdett-Coutts, who built Columbia Market, has, it is said, given hearty and substantial encouragement to the Yarmouth committee in their desire to establish a second and much larger wholesale fish-market in the metropolis.” “Miscellanea” 1870: 140.

25 “Miscellanea, Columbia Market” 1871: 595. This information is also given by Charles Dickens (Dickens 1872: 470).

26 London Metropolitan Archives, MR/U/P/1475, 1884.

27 London Metropolitan Archives, MBW/2649/34/01, 1884-1885.

28 According to different witnesses, including James Allen, a farmer and market gardener who had a stand at Spitalfields Market: “Very little business is done at Columbia Market until the market at Spitalfields is finished.” Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls 1889: 93.

29 London Metropolitan Archives, COL/RMD/PA/05/02/1118, 1890.

30 As presented in an article by J.W. 1871: 604 and by the journalist Jerrold in 1872 (Jerrold and Doré 1872: 151-52), before being further demonstrated by Peter T Jones in 2016 (Jones 2016: 73-75).

31 London Metropolitan Archives, GLC/AR/G/22/008/1, 1949-1960.

32 London Metropolitan Archives GLC/AR/HB/02/0588, 1948. The significance of the building was also underlined, shortly after, by Pevsner 1952: 71-72.

33 Columbia Market and its neighbourhood were affected by the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947. Different plans and zones were defined by the London County Council during the 1950s and 1960s and can be consulted in the London Metropolitan Archives, LCC/CL/TP/02/105, 1961. Columbia Market was demolished in 1960, replaced by a housing estate designed in 1961 and called Old Market Square.

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List of illustrations

Title Figure 1: “Columbia-Square Market: North Front of the Market Hall, Mr. H. A. Darbishire, Architect.”
Credits Source: The Builder 27 (1569), 1869: 347.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/angles/docannexe/image/6373/img-1.png
File image/png, 628k
Title Figure 2: “Columbia Market, Bethnal Green.”
Credits Source: The Builder 27(1359), 1869: 138.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/angles/docannexe/image/6373/img-2.jpg
File image/jpeg, 165k
Title Figure 3: “Columbia Markt in Bethnal-Green London”.
Credits Source: Hennicke, Julius. Mittheilungen über Markthallen in Deutschland, England, Frankreich, Belgien und Italien, Berlin: Ernst & Korn, 1881. Pl. 2
URL http://journals.openedition.org/angles/docannexe/image/6373/img-3.jpg
File image/jpeg, 516k
Title Figure 4: “Clock Tower, Columbia Square, Bethnal Green, MR. H. A. Darbishire, Architect.”
Credits Source: The Builder 21 (s.n.), 1863: 10.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/angles/docannexe/image/6373/img-4.png
File image/png, 380k
Credits Source: The Builder 31 (1814), 1877: 1128.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/angles/docannexe/image/6373/img-6.png
File image/png, 335k
Title Figure 6: Plan of proposed tramway from the Great Eastern Railway at Nottingham Street to Columbia Market overlaid upon the O.S. one inch to five feet Skeleton plan, Sheet VII.37 & 47. (detail), Richard Hassard, 1, Westminster Chambers, 14 April 1871
Credits Source: London Metropolitan Archives, COL/SVD/PL/09/0022, Columbia Market and Railways, Parliamentary Deposited Plans, November 1874.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/angles/docannexe/image/6373/img-7.jpg
File image/jpeg, 475k
Title Figure 7: Plan of Railway n°1 project for the Columbia Market (detail), November 1874.
Credits Source: London Metropolitan Archives, MR/U/P/1475, Columbia Market and Railways, Parliamentary Deposited Plans, November 1874.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/angles/docannexe/image/6373/img-8.jpg
File image/jpeg, 2.1M
Title Figure 8: Plan of the Lansbury Estate with the covered market, 1972.
Credits Source: London Metropolitan Archives, LCC Photograph Library, SC PHL 02 0819 72 5946.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/angles/docannexe/image/6373/img-9.png
File image/png, 1.5M
Title Figure 9: Lansbury Market with the clock tower, Chrisp Street Market, 1954.
Credits Source: London Metropolitan Archives, LCC Photograph Library, SC PHL 02 0942 1515
URL http://journals.openedition.org/angles/docannexe/image/6373/img-10.png
File image/png, 444k
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References

Electronic reference

Emeline Houssard, “Urban Innovation and Philanthropy, New Perspectives on the Columbia Market, London”, Angles [Online], 15 | 2022, Online since 15 November 2022, connection on 13 September 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/6373; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.6373

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About the author

Emeline Houssard

Emeline Houssard is a PhD candidate in Art History at Sorbonne Université, Paris. Currently a Research specialist at the Département d’Histoire de l’Architecture et d’Archéologie de la Ville de Paris (DHAAP), she previously worked at La Cité de la Céramique Sèvres-Limoges and the Pavillon de l’Arsenal. Since 2019, she has also been teaching both at Université Gustave-Eiffel and Sorbonne Université. Contact: emeline.houssard@gmail.com

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Copyright

CC-BY-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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