Alain Head, a long-time former resident of the Amwell area and the architectural advisor to the society, gave an entertaining talk at the Annual General Meeting on May 14. His theme was architectural soup – and how the mix of different ingredients can often provide a satisfying unity.

To illustrate his different ‘soups’ we went on a whistle stop tour across much of the built-world to be surprised by the quirky additions, re-purposing and juxtapositions of buildings. Some surprising examples from places as diverse as Chicago and China, where new buildings are piled on top of the old ones to good effect.

Closer to home came his example of Greenwich power station with the Trinity Almshouses nestling beside it, and a reminder that the glorious size of the turbine hall at Tate Modern arises from the repurposing of Bankside power station.

In Clerkenwell he talked to the importance of how we renovate houses within a conservation area. Often a modern alternative may be more in keeping than a fake period replacement. Indeed, the late, great Lubetkin favoured the newest window technology over a strict facsimile during the 1980s refurbishment of his pioneering modernist Spa Green estate. Buildings move on and assimilate the changes brought by new technology.

In the midst of an April hail flurry members of the Amwell Society and the Lloyd Square gardeners met to plant a tree in memory of Liz Thornton who died in 2018.
The tree is a mountain ash, Sorbus Joseph Rock, which produces yellow berries and brilliant leaf colour in the Autumn. Liz was a previous secretary of the Amwell society, and for many years led the gardening at Lloyd Square.

In glorious summer weather the tenth Amwell street fete on Sunday Ist July was a roaring success with more stalls, events, musical variety and visitors than ever before – a tribute to the hard work of the organisers.

The Amwell society ran a window box competition, and had plenty of excellent entries.  Joanna Ward, Camilla Jenssen and Sally Hull snapped all the entries and there were generous donations of prizes from Brownings Garage, The Hairdressers and Ground Control.

First, second and third prizes went to David & Ella Nazar of 45 Wilmington Square, Bozana Vesilinoska of 32 Amwell Street and Geoffrey Thomas of 44 Great Percy Street respectively.  The communal entry was won by the residents of 15-19 Percy Circus.  Warm congratulations to all the winners.

Alec Forshaw, former conservation officer with London Borough of Islington, has a deep knowledge of buildings and the local area. He gave us a masterly overview of the history of Smithfield from the beginning of the meat market –described in 1174 as

“A smooth field where every Friday ….. are placed vendibles of the peasant, swine with deep flanks and cows and oxen of immense bulk”

through the successful battle to prevent the demolition of the Western General Market for city offices, and continue the renewal of Smithfield by moving the Museum of London to this site.

The live meat market became an unmanageable nuisance as the population of London grew and in 1855 a Royal Commission required it to move, finding a new home in Copenhagen fields in the north of Islington. But it was railway development which truly secured the future of the new Central Market, designed by Horace Jones and opened in 1868. The glorious glass and iron extravaganza we see above ground is only the tip of the iceberg.  Below ground vast excavations provided for underground railway sidings where meat was delivered from all parts of the country and raised to the market with powerful hydraulic lifts.

 

In 1945 one of the last V-2 rockets of the second world war to hit London landed at Harts corner destroying the iconic tower at the junction of Farringdon Road and Charterhouse Street.

The rebuilding after the war, and after the 1958 fire in the poultry market, was only a temporary reprieve in what appeared to be a gradual decline of the market and the surrounding neighbourhood.

In Alec Forshaw’s first (1980) edition of ‘Smithfield: past present and future’ he somewhat gloomily predicted that the market might die. His 2015 edition is more upbeat about the future.  The Corporation of London completed a major modernization of the central market in 1997, but the outlying buildings including Horace Jones’ General Market, Fish Market and the Red House cold store were left to decay. Two public inquiries later and a massive amount of lobbying has saved the western markets for the future. This is a decision which challenges the hegemony of the financial market as sole solution, and endorses conservation led regeneration.