Smithfield Market, in the heart of London, is being redeveloped: a museum of the city will move in and the meat operation will transfer to the edge of the city.
There’s 1000 years of history at Smithfield, a lot of it violent and not always because of the animals. It’swhere, in 1305, Scottish independence warrior William “Braveheart” Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered. A few decades later, Richard II had the peasant revolutionary Wat Tyler decapitated there.
In the 19th century, the River Fleet, running beneath Smithfield, was the rumoured home of a herd of giant mutant pigs. Another rumour, from the 18th century, said a ghost called Scratching Fanny haunted the part of Smithfield called Cock Lane. Don’t blame me, I’m just reporting the facts.
In 1994, chef Fergus Henderson opened his “nose to tail” restaurant St John there, helping to transform Smithfield into a popular market and London into one of the dining capitals of the world.
But as a public attraction for shopping, eating, or just visiting, Smithfield has never managed to become as popular as Covent Garden or as fashionable as the Borough Market, south of the Thames.
Worse, because it’s the largest wholesale meat market in Britain, meat trucks clog the city’s streets. Large factories and distribution centres are terribly disruptive when they remain in a city’s heart.
Render showing part of the proposed conversion of Smithfield Market in London. Image / Stanton Williams Architects
Redeveloping a city’s old precincts doesn’t always go well, but sometimes it really does. Covent Garden is one of the best examples: an unappealing district was transformed in 1980 into one of London’s major visitor attractions. The key to its success? Pedestrianisation.
Cultural centres are also important for urban renewal. We know this in New Zealand from Te Papa and many regional cities. At Smithfield, the London Museum will take pride of place, with a large range of other drawcards expected to grow around it.
Public transport is vital too: Smithfield is on the new Elizabeth Line, which has fast connections to Heathrow and Gatwick airports.
Could we do the same thing in Auckland? We have Shed 10 on Queens Wharf and the very similar Shed 11, which was deconstructed with care in 2010: every part was numbered and placed in storage, awaiting resurrection.
Those beautiful historic buildings could form the heart of a great new museum of the city, or a museum of the sea, with the car storage gone from the nearby wharves, and new facilities for swimming, outdoor entertainments and more stretching from Queens Wharf east to Bledisloe. With a bold new architectural concept to tie it all together.
Queens Wharf could then become a fulcrum uniting a revitalised Queen St with the Viaduct and Wynyard Quarter.
It’s already part of a transport hub. Putting a major cultural institution there, with ground-up community engagement from the start, could be a fabulous city-building experience.
Besides, industries with a constant stream of freight trucks don’t belong on central-city roads. Ports of Auckland, you could even make this happen.
Smithfield Market in 1839.
Well, it's a meat market, they have a lot of meat. A butcher at Smithfield Market. Photo / Getty Images
Design for Living appears weekly in Canvas magazine.
