Resited Floral Hall Portico At Borough Market

Resited Floral Hall Portico at Borough Market

Originally a multi-purpose space for hire alongside the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, this structure now serves (since being relocated around 2003) as a decorative frontage to Borough Market with a first-floor restaurant above an open, arcaded market space. It was designed by Edward Middleton Barry in 1858-9, with a replacement welded steel pediment and tympanum dating from around 2003 surrounding the original semi-circular glazed arch at the front.

The relocated structure formerly comprised the southern front of the Floral Hall facing onto Covent Garden Piazza. It is constructed of cast iron and glass, with a rectangular footprint, two storeys in height, three bays wide across the front (the centre bay double), and one bay deep. The ground-floor arcade is supported on square pillars except at the centre, where a slender circular post is used instead. The first floor is light and airy, lit by tall round-headed windows running continuously across the front and round the sides, and by a large radial fanlight with elaborate sunburst glazing panels above the centre of the front. This fanlight sits beneath a simple gabled steel parapet, which replaced an outer enriched band of glazing following the post-1956 restoration. The entire structure is painted in silver tones, emphasising its metallic character and distinguishing it from adjoining buildings.

Decorative interest derives from the plentiful use of perforated ornament and panelling, notably the pierced foliate spandrels of the front ground-floor arches and the abutting raised rings that run the full height of all pillars. When re-erected around 2000, various modern materials were employed: the semi-circular truss arches, I-section purlins, and glazing bars are all steel or uPVC replacements.

The ground floor comprises an open arcade as originally. The first floor is a single open space, rebuilt with a later 20th-century roof and occupied as a restaurant dining room in 2006. The interior is not of special architectural interest.

The Royal Opera House is the third theatre on the Covent Garden site. The first, the Theatre Royal and London's most luxurious theatre, opened in 1732. Henry Holland made major alterations in 1792, but the building burnt down in 1808. A new Theatre Royal designed by Robert Smirke opened in 1809, achieving many dramatic triumphs before being recast as the Royal Italian Opera House in 1847. This was lost to fire in the mid-1850s, with only the frieze surviving. Edward Middleton Barry's third theatre opened in 1858, a fireproof building in regular classical design. Barry also built the Floral Hall alongside it in 1858-9, a glass and iron frame structure intended as a concert hall annexe and winter garden. The theatre became the Royal Opera House in 1892.

While the main theatre remained little altered after its construction, the Floral Hall's roof required rebuilding following fire damage in 1956, which resulted in the loss of its lofty glass vaults and dome. During a major extension programme at Covent Garden beginning in the early 1980s, the southern portico of the Floral Hall was taken down in the early 1990s and put into storage. It was subsequently re-erected as a frontage to Borough Market in Southwark, opening in 2004.

Borough Market, claimed as London's oldest fruit and vegetable market, reopened in the 1850s in buildings designed by H Rose, with additions made in 1863-4 by E Habershon. This building proved impractical and was replaced in two campaigns during the 1890s and 1930s. These surviving structures form the backdrop onto which the resited Floral Hall, markedly different in character, has been grafted.