Dear Readers, I used to work in the Smithfield area but hadn’t been back for ages, so I decided that the area was ripe for a re-visit. As I stepped off the number 17 bus, the smell of the place drifted back to me; Smithfield is London’s wholesale meat market, and I remember the distinctive smell of blood from the carcasses that are processed here. Smithfield Meat Market was the site of slaughter of over 74,000 cattle and a million and a half sheep per year , right up to the 1850’s. Animals were driven via Highgate and Islington from all over the country: animals too weak to walk the past few miles were often killed in Highgate, which used to have a preponderance of butcher’s shops (and pubs for the drovers to ‘wet their whistle’).The raised pavements in these areas were to prevent the smart ladies and gentlemen from getting their clothing soiled by all the dung from these benighted creatures.
Smithfield was second only to Tyburn as the site of many executions, including the Peasant’s Revolt leader Wat Tyler and the Scottish knight Sir William Wallace, of Braveheart fame. Swindlers and forgers were boiled to death in oil here in the 15th Century. In short, the amount of human and animal misery that these stones have witnessed should surely have left their mark. Peter Ackroyd, that august chronicler of the Capital, believes that certain places in the city retain their character in spite of attempts at modernisation. It will be interesting to see if this plays out in the Smithfield area.
There is an extraordinary amount of building going on. I spend a lot of time trying to get my bearings, and on every corner there seems to be a chap in a high-vis jacket and a hard hat, shouting about deliveries into a mobile phone. Many of the old buildings remain, after a fight to retain them, and the Museum of London is due to be relocated here at 2021. There is lots of modernisation but I also read recently that it is planned that the meat market, along with Billingsgate fish market (currently in Poplar) and Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market (in Leyton) will all be relocated to Barking. What will happen to the remaining Smithfield buildings remains to be seen.
However, this is all very well, but I am really here to investigate an interesting new project in the little park in West Smithfield. Wayward Plants is an organisation that, among other things, has been organising the ‘adoption’ of unwanted house plants from events such as the Hampton Court Flower Show, which can only be a good thing. In Smithfield, they have put up a ‘greenhouse’ called ‘The House of Wayward Plants’. This is a pun on the ‘Wardian Case’, which was very popular as a way of displaying and growing ferns during the Victorian era: you might remember that I have written about ‘fern mania’ or ‘pteridomania’ during this time, when whole areas were denuded of (sometimes rare) ferns by eager collectors. My first sight of the ‘House’ was from behind a human drinking fountain,
The tree comes originally from the Black Sea, and is native to the Caucasus (as you might expect) – the notice on the railings says that they come from Iran. The notice also mentions that you shouldn’t try to grow a Caucasian Wingnut in your garden, because it can grow to over 30 metres tall and has a dense, spreading canopy. I also rather like the fissured bark.
This hasn’t stopped the building of one or two strangely unsympathetic buildings, however.
I enjoyed reading your interesting piece on the history of Smithfield and how the area is rapidly changing. Looking forward to the next one. Sarah
I enjoyed reading about the history of Smithfield, London is a very interesting city as there are so many layers of history. I look forward to reading more. Sarah
Really interesting. Thank you. You should look up a book by a friend of mine. It’s called “Ghost Trees” by Bob Gilbert and it looks at trees through the history of London. Bob is an ecologist and social historian and a great writer. I’ll forward your blog to him as I’m sure he’ll be intersted.
I have the book already, i shall move it to the top of my reading pile….thank you!
I knew that the A1 (which is the Holloway Rd in my part of town) was the route from the Highlands to Smithfield’s, but had not realised the role of Highgate and Upper Street. The meat industry is deep in our culture in so many ways.
It sounds like a very interesting part of the city – I wonder how the ‘psychic energy’ is there though with so much death – does it feel like a sad place?
It’s hard to subtract what I already know about Smithfield from how I experience it, if you know what I mean….with all the building work it can seem very chaotic and a bit desolate, but strangely enough all that death doesn’t seem to have seeped into the stones in the way that you might expect.
An interesting trip.
Love
Hilary
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The so-called ‘English’ walnut, which is related to the wingnut, and also from Persia, used to be a very common street tree in Sunnyvale, not because it was planned to be as such, but because the town grew out into the old walnut orchards, and trees that happened to be in the right situations remained as houses were built around them. They survived development remarkably well, but were mostly cut down since them because of the messy walnuts. (Yeah, ‘messy’ walnuts, in a region that was once famous for orchard production.)
I like the Wingnut Tree but you would not get me near that fern house! They make me cringe.
Interesting! I have a dear friend who has a phobia about ferns and bracken. I wonder how such things arise? Fascinating….