A Fish Auction in Columbia Market 1871

In 1869 Baroness Burdett-Coutts paid for the building of the great Columbia Market (for fish) between Hackney and Bethnal Green Roads on the site of Nova Scotia Gardens, a squalid area of tenements and hovels and dust heaps. The cost of building the market was estimated at £200, 000. It was a philanthropic enterprise to make a clearance of the slum dwellings which clustered so thickly in the area but also to help the local people to have supplies of cheap fresh produce. Lack of support from wholesalers and small traders who preferred the open streets ensured its failure and it closed in 1885 and eventually became a bit of a white elephant and was demolished between 1958 and 1966

Auction Baroness Bethnal Burdett Cheap Clearance Clustered Coutts Dwellings Enterprise Hackney Heaps Hovels Markets Nova Produce Scotia Slum Squalid Tenements Thickly

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