East building of Central Market

This is the east building of the Central Market, constructed in 1868 as a meat market by Horace Jones, the City architect. It is a red brick building with Portland stone dressings, featuring structural cast iron for gateways and the interior, topped with Welsh slate roofs. The roofs have double-thickness glass louvres to the lower half and additional louvred dormers at the top.

The building has a rectangular plan with a central north-south thoroughfare called Grand Avenue. It is designed in a French-Italian Renaissance style and stands as a single storey. The north and south elevations have thirty-six bays each, while the east and west elevations have six bays each. The north and south elevations feature central, cast-iron elliptical-arched gateways leading to Grand Avenue. Above the arches is a pediment displaying the City Arms, set within a scrolled cast-iron tympanum, and flanked by coupled Doric pilasters topped by large statues of London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Liverpool. Recessed bays flank the gateway, with decorative cast-iron grilles covering the tympana and square-headed windows. These windows have cornices, bracketed sills, Doric pilasters, a triglyph frieze, a moulded cornice and urns. The east and west elevations are similar, with coupled Doric pilasters framing a tall cast-iron gateway, an ornate tympanum above a semi-circular arch displaying the City Arms, and a bracketed pediment.

The corner pavilions are two-storeys high and feature Doric pilasters on the ground floor, mirroring the pedimented elevations with City Arms set in foliate-carved tympanae flanked by stone griffins. The upper sections are octagonal, with oculi set in shell architraves above plate-glass sash windows within eared architraves. These are accompanied by enriched tympanae and acroteria to the pediments. Each pavilion has a bell-shaped cupola tiled with decorative leaf-punched copper, topped with a louvred wooden lantern.

Inside, Grand Avenue is covered by a fifteen-bay queen-post roof with decorative spandrels to the lateral and transverse arch bracing. This is supported by a cast-iron tie-beam and column assembly. The columns have foliate capitals, and the bracing has decorative spandrels. Ten original cast-iron lanterns remain, attached to brackets with decorative spandrels projecting from wrought-iron screens with fleur-de-lys parapets. Decorative wrought-iron gates are set beneath iron grilles in the centre of each side. The flanking market halls are organized around lateral avenues with foliate capitals supporting row of cast-iron columns. These columns support lattice girders with spandels to the timber arch-braced trusses. Other roofs have simpler trusses supported by cast-iron columns with octagonal capitals.