D-escort blog

I will always live here, SE1 has such a pulling power for me….I keep up the tradition of ‘dollymopping’ as the first lady of ‘ill repute’ was recorded here in 1058…

A very rich history here, the first settlements of London was ‘The City’. 

 ’Lo! Let there be Dollymopping! And there was, if you popped over London Bridge…’

Shard London Bridge, also known as London Bridge Tower, the Shard of Glass, 32 London Bridge and The Shard is a supertall skyscraper under construction in Southwark, London, England. When completed in 2012 it will be the tallest building in the United Kingdom.

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My beloved Borough Market, pop in, you’ll probably see me pottering around…I go on Fridays.

A brief history of Borough Market…

The crucial factor in the history of Borough Market is London Bridge. Until the eighteenth century, it was the only bridge over the Thames from London (which at that time didn’t extend across the river). It was thus the only link between London and southern England and with continental Europe, whence merchants travelled to London, finding accommodation in Southwark’s inns, the most well-known of which was The Tabard, where Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims assembled before their journey. Its enormous importance was reflected by constant complaints about traffic congestion on and around it and the prominence over the centuries of Southwark. In 1295 Southwark was the only borough in England apart from the City of London itself to be represented by two Members of Parliament; similarly, 300 years later it paid the king a larger subsidy than any other English town or city except London. Its leading position was echoed by the wealth and influence of some of its citizens, without whose support the Market almost certainly wouldn’t have survived.

The first incarnation of the Market was actually on the bridge. There are likely to have been traders there earlier than 1014, but at this date reference was made to the sale of grain, fish, vegetables, and cattle, which in the days before the railways had to be transported on the hoof. They were enclosed in pens, which must have had much the same effect on traffic as the barricades round roadworks today.

In 1276-8 the Mayor of London introduced regulations limiting trade from outside the City boundaries, presumably in the attempt to stamp out ‘foreign’ competition. Not long afterwards, a couple of bakers were convicted of bringing underweight loaves into the City and sentenced to be dragged through the streets tied to a hurdle. Other traders were similarly tried and punished in various ways. This phase of the Market ended when, allegedly because of congestion, it was moved to the grounds of St Thomas’s hospital. At that time the Hospital was in Long Southwark, now Borough High Street, which is the continuation of the road over the bridge. In the thirteenth century, as the result of a fire, the Hospital moved to its present site on St Thomas’s Street. The Market went with it and continued there for several hundred years.

Two centuries after the original Market moved, another was founded in Long Southwark, the upper end of which, including the approach to the bridge, had until then belonged to the county of Surrey. In the fifteenth century, Edward III transferred ownership of it to the City, with permission to hold a Market three days a week. The area thereafter became known as the Guildable Manor.

As was usual until comparatively recently, the new Market was both wholesale and retail. A bell was rung at 10.30am to mark the change-over to retail, and again at the close of business in the evening. The traders were grouped according to type of produce, with farmers selling lamb, veal, and bacon (the first two presumably on the hoof) at the end nearest the bridge, followed by their wives with butter, then fish-sellers, then bakers, then vendors of vegetables and grain, and finally butchers. The butchers were not allowed to bring live cattle into the Market because they were ‘soe wilde that they run awaie as often as it happeneth’. In the days before refrigeration, one of a butcher’s main concerns was keeping his stock fresh. One punishment for selling bad meat was for the culprit to be pilloried and have to smell it as it was burnt in front of his nose. In 1549 the market was described as spreading along the banks of the river and butchers were required to throw entrails into the water only at high tide and then only after the guts had been chopped to no more than one yard in length.

This Market stayed in Borough High Street for nearly 300 years. Congestion was an increasing problem throughout the period. Early in the sixteenth century a Market House was built in the middle of the road, which must have been almost as obstructive as the cattle on the bridge. To reduce congestion (or, to put it another way, to discourage dalliance), women selling produce from baskets were not permitted to sit down or stop walking in the Market, and had to cry their wares continually. Similarly, unmarried women living in the slums of Bankside were forbidden to enter the Guildable Manor unless they were going to the Market – which one presumes was intended to prevent loitering in the surrounding streets but sounds like an invitation to turn the Market into the local Red Light district. That it served such a purpose, at least after it moved to its present site, is suggested by the name of the pub, The Hoar’s Nest, now renamed The Market Porter; Madam Elizabeth Holland’s ‘House of Obscenitie’ was also nearby.

As well as the Market, an annual fair was founded which took place in September and was immensely successful: at one stage, it lasted for as long as a fortnight. Hogarth’s wonderful, intricate drawing of it shows flags flying, a man crossing the street on a tight-rope, apparently also flying, a vast picture of the siege of Troy, people playing the trumpet, bagpipes, and a drum amongst a sea of bodies, and a woman displaying a magnificent pair of thighs. Although published over 100 years later, Wordsworth’s verbal description of St Bartholomew’s Fair paints much the same picture:
Below, the open space, through every nook
Of the wide area, twinkles, is alive
With heads…
With chattering monkeys dangling from their poles…
With those that stretch the neck and strain the eyes,
And crack the voice in rivalship, the crowd
Inviting; with buffoon against buffoons
Grimacing, writhing, screaming, – him who grinds
The hurdy-gurdy, at the fiddle weaves,
Rattles the salt-box, thumps the kettle-drum
And him who at the trumpet puffs his cheeks…
All moveables of wonder, from all parts,
Are here – Albinos, painted Indians, Dwarfs,
The Horse of knowledge, and the learned Pig,
The Stone-eater, the man that swallows fire,
Giants, Ventriloquists, the Invisible Girl…
The fair was abolished because of its rowdiness in 1762, just a few years after the Market in the High Street was also forced to close.

By the eighteenth century, the crush of carts and carriages on the bridge was such that pedestrians climbed on to the parapet to avoid being run over. Some of them ended up needing medical treatment, which had to be paid for by the parish of St Margaret’s at Southwark. Discussions about moving the Market House were already under way when a great fire broke out and it was burnt to the ground. The City seized the opportunity to try to close the Market but was forestalled by the wily citizens of Southwark, who succeeded in prolonging its life in the High Street for another eighty years.

This Market was finally terminated by an Act of Parliament in 1755. The residents of Southwark, however, petitioned successfully to start another, which was to be independent of the City and in a place conveniently accessible to (but not actually in) the High Street. They raised £6,000 and bought an area called The Triangle which, with additions, is where the Market is still held today. As described at the time, it didn’t sound very attractive: it was situated ‘on the backside of Three Counties court eastwards, Fowle Lane buildings in Rochester Yard and Dirty Lane northwards; and towards Deadman’s Place westwards’. Possibly Deadman’s Place was so called because the Clink prison was just down the road. Similarly, the term ‘stony-broke’ is said to have arisen because debtors passed down Stoney Street to be imprisoned there.

A covered area for selling corn was built on the new site within a few years. In 1801 the whole market was covered over. By 1870 its appearance had been transformed by a magnificent Crystal Palace-style glass and iron structure with twin arches and a dome. By this time too, the South Eastern Railway had built the viaduct over the Market which is still there today: at that date, however, it was neatly sandwiched in the space between the two arches. Before it was built, the Market Trustees had insisted on certain terms in their contract with the railway company: these included a ban on building work at times when it might interfere with the wholesale market, i.e. between 10pm and 10am, the provision of adequate lighting both during and after construction, the maintenance of the viaduct in the future, and payment of a fine of £50 for every day that the work exceeded the agreed date of completion.

Until then, everything sent to the Market (unless local) had either come from the south of England in a horse-drawn vehicle or from abroad in ships docking at the Winchester or St Mary Overie (‘Over-the-water’) wharves – which suggests that foreign as well as British goods were sold probably throughout its history. The arrival of the railway enormously widened its catchment area. On the other hand, it brought soot. A letter written to the Trustees by a group of traders in 1896 read:
Gentlemen, we beg to draw your attention to the very dirty condition of the arches of the South Eastern Railway Co. running over our stands, which are positively black with dirt to such a thickness that it is continually falling and damaging our samples of fruit and other goods. We… suggest that you propose to the South Eastern Railway the desirability of painting the arches white or some other light colour…
The very next year the elegant Crystal Palace-style roof was sacrificed to the railway company’s need to widen the line. After another year or so, the retail side of the Market was ended and with it the vigour and excitement which had kept it at the centre of Southwark life for so long. However, the Trustees faithfully continued to guard its interests throughout the twentieth century. Ted Bowman, the Chairman from 1981 to 2000, records its difficulties:
When I first became Chairman in 1981, there were… vacant stands in the Market, something which accelerated over the next ten or so years until we reached a point in 1995 when things were really getting precarious financially.
His first initiative was to hold an architectural competition: the winner was appointed Market architect. Then the Trustees began to consider how to reintroduce retailing. George Nicholson became Chairman of a Development Committee which set the ball rolling with Henrietta Green’s Food Lovers’ Fair of 1998. A number of the traders who came still attend regularly and form the present Retail Market’s nucleus. From that moment, as customers don’t need reminding, the Market has never looked back – indeed, after eight years it is so successful that it is returning to Edward III’s three days a week.

Sarah Freeman
Additional research: Michael Freeman and David Szanto
from Borough Market Cookbook: Meat and Fish, Civic books, 2007

Bibliography:
Illustrated history of Borough Market: 250 years, various authors,
published by the Trustees of Borough Market, 2006
Canon T P Stevens. Historic Southwark, Southwark Borough.