Smithfield Poultry Market

Smithfield Poultry Market

Poultry market, built 1961-1963 by T P Bennett and Son, with structural engineers Ove Arup and Partners and job engineer Jack Zunz. The building features a reinforced concrete frame clad externally in dark blue brick. Its most distinctive feature is a reinforced concrete shell paraboloid roof measuring 225 feet by 130 feet by 60 feet high, clad in copper with circular rooflights and surrounded by individual copper-clad gable roofs on all four sides. The roof was reported to be the largest shell dome of its kind in the world at the time of construction. A complex system of more than one thousand preformed plywood shuttering sheets, each a different shape, were used in the construction.

The building has a square plan with a double-height market hall at its centre, flanked to north and south by delivery bays. A first floor gallery with offices occupies all four sides, while the basement contains cold storage and a public house called the Cock Tavern.

The exterior exemplifies pop architecture of its era. Nine-bay façades to north and south feature hexagonal lozenge lights resembling those found in pavement basement lights, with full glazing in metal frames to the first floor. Clerestorey glazing runs at the sides under the individual roofs and on all sides under the projecting copper-clad shell. The market is entered under canopies at either end, with no formal doors to the market itself. The concrete frames have infill glazing; that to the east forms a physical link with the adjacent listed meat market of 1866-1867 by Horace Jones. Period 1960s style lettering appears throughout, including above the Cock Tavern in the basement. Commemorative plaques dated 1962 are set into the east wall.

The interior is a striking composition. The market hall is laid out with stalls featuring blue fascias and contemporary-style signage, forming a cohesive period composition unified with the tile and formica surrounds of the balcony fronts and outer walls. The entrance is tiled with patterned end walls and timber handrail. The offices, basement store, and Cock Tavern interiors are not of special interest.

Smithfield was developed as a meat market in the 1860s following the establishment of a separate live cattle market off the Caledonian Road, Islington. The present Poultry Market was built to replace an earlier market of 1873-1875 that burned down in 1958. The building cost £1,800,000 to construct. Shell construction was first introduced to England in the late 1930s with Doncaster Municipal Airport and Wythenshawe Bus Garage. Experiments in shell domes began only after the war, exemplified by nine smaller examples at Brynmawr Rubber Factory, Wales. Shell concrete domes offered an aesthetically pleasing way of achieving large uninterrupted spans using relatively little steel, making them eye-catching yet economical. The technique was adopted here for speed of construction. While shells in industrial premises are rarely set over interesting buildings, those in markets could form the basis of attractive composition, and this example successfully realises that potential. The building was described in the Architects' Journal (21 August 1963) as "the most efficiently equipped centre for the exchange of dead meat in Europe".