Smithfield heading for the chop

Press, 18 January 1986, Page 18

Smithfield heading for the chop

By

KATHLEEN CALLO,

of Reuter, in London

Blood has flowed for almost a thousand years at: London’s historic Smithfield meat market, but the market may soon find its own place on the chopping block as developers eye the area’s prime real estate. Smithfield, tucked in the northwest corner of the ancient city of London, has been the site for its meat trade since 1123. Medieval jousts and executions took place here on what was once Britain’s most famous fair ground. Today it is the last of London’s major traditional food markets, but its continued survival is doubtful. Like the celebrated flower market at Covent Garden, which de-

velopers transformed into a tourist

mall with fashionable restaurants and boutiques, each of the city’s big markets, except for Smithfield, has been ' moved outside central London. “The Corporation of London (the market’s owner) plans to parcel the area off and sell it to the highest bidder. Fm absolutely certain of that,” said George Allan, head of a group aimed at preserving the area’s historic character. City authorities, faced with a drastic decline in Smithfield’s meat trade, want the market to be trimmed down. They say its buildings, some more than a hundred years old, do not meet modern health standards and are falling apart.

Indeed the market, though infin-

itely cleaner now than it was centuries ago, has never claimed to be a place for the weak at heart.

Charles Dickens recalled it as a grimy corner of London in 1837 in “Oliver Twist”: “The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire: and a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with fog ... hung heavily above.” In 1868 Smithfield was reconstructed and the market set up in its present form. The city decided then to end the centuries-old practice of herding live cattle through the streets of London for slaughter and sale at the market. Most trading now goes on within an imposing iron and glass “palace” designed by Sir Horace Jones, a city architect, and consisting of two buildings with soaring arcades, stone-domed octagonal towers, dragons, and griffins. These buildings have been given historic status, but the Corporation of London has recently proposed demolishing the three other, less historic buildings on the 10-acre (four hectare) market site. The land would be sold for an

expected £25 million (SNZ7I.S million), and £l5 million sterling (?NZ42.9 million) would be invested in refurbishing and modernising the remaining two structures. A recent report outlining the proposal cites a shrinking wholesale meat trade as supermarkets increasingly buy their meat direct from slaughterhouses. City authorities say the volume of meat now passing through Smithfield, about 150,000 tonnes a year, is about half the level of 30 years ago. Bruce Ratcliff, who helps run his father’s meat shop at Smithfield, said the large orders that used to stream in have been reduced to a trickle.

. “We hold about a quarter of the meat we used to hold,” he said. “Sometimes we make just five quid (pounds) (SNZI3.7) off a customer, but with business as bad as it has been, we have got to take everything we can get.” The report says the market, at the present rate of decline, could completely die out in 30 years, but Robin Elliott, head of the market’s tenants’ association, called it “appallingly misleading” and said the decline had now levelled off.

Vendors at Smithfield agree the market has. to be modernised, he said, but some 20 companies are afraid of being displaced if some of it is sold.

“One thing is for sure,” said Mr Elliott. “There is no way all those tenants are going to fit into those two buildings.” In any event, George Allan of the Smithfield Trust told Reuter, if the three buildings werd sold,

developers would soon be "casting their lean and hungry looks” at the other two.

“The developers are all screaming now for the big sites, for the big, fat buildings,” he said. Smithfield’s special character, which locals are afraid the area would lose if the market were squeezed out, is evident at five in the morning when the place goes into full swing. At that hour the porters — traditionally called “bummarees” — are rushing about, bent double with the weight of carts piled high with meat Vendors in bloodsoaked white coats dash in and out of rows of carcases hanging from hooks.

You can find almost anything a carnivore could dream of in this bustling place, from huge sides of beef and pork to small game birds and fresh rabbit, from pig’s head to cow’s tongue to a whole variety of other anatomical parts. “Where can you still walk into a place and buy meat like that?” said Norman Steptoe, who, at 72, has worked in the market for 50 years.

“It won’t last much longer, though,” he added, in spite of the Corporation’s insistence that it is committed to keeping that least part of the site as a marketplace. "Development is fine,” said a market tenant, Fred Russell. “There are a lot of places in the city where you could make a lot of money, but there’s a lot of great tradition here.

“If they sold this place, it would be like selling St Paul’s,” he said. “There would be a revolution.”