Smithfield Market development plans halted

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has stepped in to save Smithfield Market from controversial new development helmed by McAslan + Partners, writes Laura Tennant , and we couldn't be more pleased.  Here's how we covered the story back in February

If you work in EC1 you’ve probably walked past Bart’s Hospital and through Smithfield Market, where meat merchants ply their trade as they have done on that site for 800 years. On one side of Horace Jones’s magnificent high Victorian market buildings is the sober, besuited City, and on the other, groovy Clerkenwell, where creative industries flourish – trendy Soho eatery Polpo even has an outpost in Cowcross Street, a name that originates in the area’s medieval character. 

Walk east towards the Barbican and you’ll find the General and Fish markets, also part of Jones’s beautiful structure but unaccountably unlisted and left empty for 30 years. According to Save Britain’s Heritage, the complex as a whole comprises ‘the greatest parade of 19th-century covered market halls in Europe’.

The fate of these buildings is now the subject of a public enquiry which opened at the Guildhall on 11th February. Like Battersea Power Station and before it Covent Garden Market, they have become a symbolic battleground for forces fighting over London’s soul. Should they be redeveloped into office space, albeit with their Victorian veneer left mainly intact? Or should their soaring internal proportions (and the subterranean network, formerly a goods yard, underneath) be preserved and used for shops, galleries, cinemas, bars and restaurants with space for a genuine piazza outside?

On one side are owners Henderson Global Assets, architects McAslan + Partners, the City’s mighty Planning Officer Peter Rees, the Mayor of London and English Heritage. On the other are a small army of celebrities (among them Alan Bennett, Jeanette Winterson and Glenda Jackson), local residents, charitable bodies including Save Britain’s Heritage, the Victorian Society and the World Monuments Fund, and developers with an alternative vision – one, they say, which will preserve the buildings’ character and enrich the area as a whole. 

So why does it matter so much what happens inside the building, as long as most of Jones’s façade remains? Victorian fetishism aside, at bottom the answer is bound up with the very nature of a modern city and how its citizens can best live, love, survive and thrive within it.  

Save Britain’s Heritage has been passionately opposed to Henderson’s plans since they were first mooted, and one of its founders, Simon Jenkins, explained why in the Evening Standard last week. ‘Future cities derive their prosperity from their human appeal, not from office towers or luxury flats. People come to a city to live and work because of its magnetism, a magnetism that depends not on demolition, clearance and rebuilding but on the steady evolution in the uses to which old buildings are put. Witness Paris’s Rive Gauche or New York’s Greenwich Village.’

Jenkins remembers the arguments surrounding the fate of Covent Garden in the Seventies. Incredibly, these beautiful buildings, now home to a buzzing restaurant, cultural and shopping hub which draws vast numbers of tourists and has seen property values soar, were once scheduled for demolition by the Greater London Council. To replace them, a six-lane traffic highway with office buildings on either side was proposed. Anyone unfortunate enough to live in a London suburb where Sixties planners ripped out the town centre to improve ‘traffic flow’ will feel a shudder of horrified recognition at this monstrous idea. 

Yet according to Jenkins, the same short-sightedness is now being applied to Smithfield. London’s last great undeveloped historic market could be ‘a neighbourhood of character and public resort’ – or it could become a soulless office block with a figleaf of Victoriana.

The disputed buildings have a complicated backstory. They were first acquired by developers Thornfield, but its plan to demolish the site and erect a brutal office block was quickly rejected by the government of the day, and the company then went into administration. 

John Burrell of architects Burrell, Foley and Fischer, who have worked with Save to propose an alternative scheme, takes up the story. ‘At that point the government recommended that the site be offered for sale to the market so that competing proposals for regeneration could be considered. But instead, the buildings were handed direct to Henderson. They’ve done what they know, which is a very prosaic, mundane office block. What the site needs is a developer with vision – like that shown by Argent in King’s Cross.’

Save even dispute the figures quoted by Henderson, explains director Clem Cecil: ‘Henderson’s claim that its proposal will leave 75% of the structure intact is disingenuous – the figure (which we dispute) refers to the external parts of the building that they are demolishing rather its total volume. This includes one facade and the entire roof structure, gutting the building to make space for an office block and in the process destroying the magnificent market halls.’

For its part, Henderson is fighting a vigorous campaign to push the proposal through and has even commissioned a YouGov poll test the public mood. The poll’s results, said the company’s director of property development Geoff Harris, show that,  ‘Londoners support our scheme, which will save and bring back to life Victorian market buildings that have lain empty for decades. The clear majority recognise that Smithfield Quarter will change the area for the better, will be effective in retaining the Victorian appearance of the buildings and should go ahead as soon as possible.’

The company have also produced evidence from estate agents Knight Frank to support their argument that Save’s scheme will not be commercially viable, and that the alternative is to let the buildings fall into disrepair, ‘blighted by further uncertainty’.  (It’s worth noting that Eric Reynolds of Urban Space Management, the company behind the regeneration of Greenwich, Spitalfields and Trinity Buoy Wharf, among others, disagrees.)

Late capitalism, Culture Whisper observes, decrees that the only thing worthy of our attention is the bottom line – a philosophy with which even English Heritage’s London planning and conservation director Nigel Barker seems to concur. ‘Our question for the planning inspector is, can Save’s proposals deliver a long-term future for the building?’ he told the FT. ‘They have to be absolutely sure that they can be delivered. It’s hearts and minds against hard economics.’

The last thing London needs is another iconic heritage site left to languish for years. But nor do we want considerations of profit alone to dictate what happens to the fabric of one of the most ancient and richly historic parts of our city. Like Spitalfields, Borough, Greenwich and Covent Garden markets, Smithfield could contribute to the gaiety of our nation and become part of Clerkenwell’s burgeoning creative quarter. Or, it could be swallowed up by the suits on the other side. 

Want to get involved or learn more? Visit Save Britain's Heritage  for further background on the SAVE/Victorian Society Planning Application for Smithfield General Market and Annex

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