Brixton Markets - Reliance Arcade, Market Row And Granville Arcade (Brixton Village)

These three covered markets for fruit, vegetables and sundry goods form the historic core of Brixton Market. Reliance Arcade was built in 1923-5, Market Row in 1928 by Andrews and Peascod, and Granville Arcade (now called Brixton Village) in 1935-8 by Alfred and Vincent Burr. All are of brick and concrete construction, with Market Row featuring a distinctive precast reinforced open-arched concrete truss roof. The markets were refurbished in 1996, and the individual shops have undergone regular alterations since the late 20th century.

Reliance Arcade

Reliance Arcade is a straight, narrow covered passage running east-west from Electric Lane to Brixton Road, cutting through a block of mainly inter-war buildings that are architecturally unrelated to the arcade itself.

The west elevation facing Brixton Road is of two storeys, with the upper floor rendered and bearing brightly-coloured modern signage. The ground floor entrance has been fitted with a modern frontage and metal roller shutters, making this elevation of lesser interest.

The east elevation on Electric Lane forms the primary architectural interest of the arcade. The façade is executed in buff faience with Art Deco Egyptian-style detailing in red, green, yellow and blue on the small columns flanking the upper-floor window. Above the ground floor door and windows is a coved, fluted cornice. The original 'Reliance Arcade' sign survives in the transom above the entrance. However, the ground floor faience has been painted over, obscuring the original surrounds, and the two small flanking shop windows have been blocked up.

Inside, numerous shallow shops line both sides of the narrow avenue. These are separated by wooden pilasters faced with black vitrolite, which is also used on the deep soffits, though replacement materials have been introduced in some places. The pitched roof is carried on simple curved steel arches with replaced glazing, now mostly hidden by a dropped ceiling.

Market Row

Market Row occupies an infill site bounded by Electric Avenue to the north, Atlantic Road to the east, Coldharbour Lane to the south, and Electric Lane to the west. The arcades form a broad T-shaped plan with three entrances.

The east and west entrances were originally similar in design: two storeys, three bays wide, with a shop on either side of the entrance. Above each entrance was a Diocletian window and oculus, flanked by small semi-circular windows. At the east entrance, the glazing has been in-filled and the shop fronts replaced. The west entrance has been heavily altered. Photographic evidence indicates that the parapets have been raised on both. The south entrance is rendered, again of two storeys and three bays, with a parapet that may have been altered. Here the neo-classical idiom of the other entrances is not repeated (possibly due to alterations). The upper floor has horizontal glazing in the moderne style, but this appears to be replacement work. The curved glazed canopies and ceramic roundels at each entrance date from the 1996 refurbishment.

The interior is of greater architectural interest than the exterior. Shops line both sides of the T-shaped shopping avenues and rise to two storeys plus attics, divided by a concrete pilaster frame. Some ground floor shops are enclosed with shop fronts, others are open-fronted with roller blinds. The upper floors contain offices. While some shop fronts retain original elements, they have generally been much altered. The shopping avenues benefit from abundant natural light cast through the glazed and exposed roof structure. The pitched glazed roofs are carried on reinforced concrete open-arched trusses with roundels aligned on each shopping bay.

Granville Arcade (Brixton Village)

Granville Arcade occupies a trapezoidal plot between Coldharbour Lane to the south, railway viaducts to the north and west, and a 1904 steam laundry to the east.

The twin main entrances on Coldharbour Lane form an integral part of Granville House, a four-storey block of flats with ground-floor shops. This is faced in brown brick and render, seven bays wide, with modern fluted detailing to the narrow central bay. The ground-floor shop fronts have been replaced. The market entrances have large, flat, slightly stepped arches, with full-height shallow canted bay windows above.

From these entrances run a pair of long arcades (First and Second Avenues) which diverge to fit the trapezoidal site. These are joined laterally by four more arcades of increasing lengths (Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Avenues), creating a ladder-like plan. There is a western entrance under the viaduct in Atlantic Road, but this has no architectural treatment. A further entrance to the north has a simple square arch. Originally this entrance featured a wide arch with 'Granville Arcade' in blocky lettering, but it was reconfigured and modern 'Brixton Village' lettering applied.

Inside, shops occupy the ground floor, some enclosed with shop fronts, others open-fronted with roller blinds. The upper floor contains offices. Some shop fronts retain original elements but have generally been much altered. The arcades have pitched glazed roofs carried on curved steel trusses.

Historical Context

This cluster of covered markets in Brixton was developed in the early 20th century when market traders were relocated from Brixton Road. Reliance Arcade was the first, built in 1925-6 on the site of a large 19th-century house occupying a long plot of land. Bizarrely, the shell of the house was retained and now straddles the centre of the arcade. The choice of an Egyptian frontage was an early adoption of the fashion for this style that emerged following the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 and the Paris Exhibition of 1925.

Market Row was built around 1928 to the design of RS Andrews and J Peascod. The third market, Granville Arcade, was built in 1935-8 to the design of Alfred and Vincent Burr and is named after the builder and developer, P Granville Grossman. The markets were refurbished in 1996, involving alterations to some of the façades.

The post-war history of these markets holds particular significance. Brixton is widely recognised as the pre-eminent district of Afro-Caribbean settlement and culture in both the capital and the country. This identity emerged quickly from the 1950s when immigrants from the West Indies, particularly Jamaica, settled in this South London suburb, largely due to cheap housing in this once salubrious but increasingly run-down and Blitz-damaged neighbourhood. With hundreds, then thousands, of newly-arrived immigrants lodging in boarding houses, a substantial new community established itself in the area.

Brixton Market, with its jumble of stalls selling plantains, Jamaican patties, yams, green bananas, and an array of Caribbean foodstuffs, rapidly became an important focal point for the new arrivals, many of whom made their homes in the adjacent environs of Atlantic Road, Electric Avenue, Coldharbour Lane, and Railton Road. By the late 1960s much of this area had become one of the largest and most important sites of Caribbean settlement in the United Kingdom, and word of Brixton's reputation as 'the spiritual home of Caribbeans in Britain' spread back to the Caribbean, encouraging new generations of settlers. As the focal point of this community and the most visible manifestation of the important cultural foodstuffs of the new settlers, the market played an important cultural role. Furthermore, that there was confidence and critical mass enough to display it openly, in what was not always a welcoming host population, gives the presence of the market added meaning.

A white stallholder in the mid-1950s commented that it was the pioneering market holders, mostly grocers and butchers in and around Brixton Market, who began to cater for the West Indian residents, and that their arrival was 'a shot in the arm for local trade'. As white custom decreased, those who began to sell rice, dried cod fish, dried pork and ackee, spices, beans, tinned yams and coconut butter, and more exotic fruits and vegetables like mangoes, pineapple and avocados, prospered. The markets were increasingly frequented by black customers and residents in the late 1950s and 1960s. In 1956, when the wife of Jamaica's Chief Minister, Mrs Edna Marleng, wanted to meet as many Jamaican migrants as possible during her visit, she asked to go to Brixton Market on a Saturday morning and 'ended up shaking hands with fifty West Indians who recognised me. I was surprised to see them buying sweet potatoes and tinned ackee...it was like a little bit of home'. By the late 1950s, Brixton Market had become the commercial and cultural heart of a new and growing community in England.

The successful adoption of these markets by the Afro-Caribbean community represents the clearest architectural manifestation of the major wave of immigration that had such an important impact on the cultural and social landscape of post-war Britain, making this site one of considerable historical resonance.