Billingsgate Market

Hi-tech PoMo fusion with functional, municipal undertones. The market moved to this site in Poplar in 1982. In its original setting, on the north back of the Thames and close to Tower Bridge, the inner city riverside market was the largest in the world. Its 1870s building, designed by Horace Jones was retrofitted by Richard Rogers Partnership (now RSHP) between 1986-88. The new Billingsgate Market, now in the Borough of Tower Hamlets, continued to be operated by the City of London Corporation. The market hall and cold stores were built as additions and adaptations to an earlier ‘shed’, built on the site 1912-15 to designs by Frederick Palmer, engineer, using the Hennebique system. Following bomb damage, this and other sheds were repaired under the direction of Higgs & Hill in 1948. Newman Levinson and Partners retained the frame, floors and end walls of Shed 36 and added new independent structures. The two new elements are united under a single canopy roof carried by an extensive steel space frame suspended by masts and cantilevered over loading areas. The entire frame is a bright yellow and a lively contrast to the machined red brick, its curved corners and arched openings. The Survey of London has it that ‘the fish merchants were keen to revive the atmosphere of the old market’ and that this site, close to the water and with existing buildings to convert, met their brief. This was one of the early buildings in the transformation of the Isle of Dogs and is easily overlooked – it is dwarfed and enclosed by increasingly overbearing McTowerblocks. Never in the same division as its famous PoMo neighbour, John Outram’s Pumping Station (1988), it nonetheless deserves to be acknowledged for its fusion of fashion, function and funk. Viewed as ‘an awkward consort’ [1] as it aged, the market is now subject to further relocation and is scheduled to move eastward again to Albert Island in Royal Dock to a new facility it will share with Smithfield Market. Trading will cease in 2028 and the site is expected to be developed for housing.

[1] https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols43-4/pp300-310#anchorn19