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London Museum’s opening will give the public access to a building that twice came close to major demolition. It also gives new significance to SAVE’s decades-long campaign, which kept the General Market standing until a long-term public use could be secured. Beedier attended the panel to understand how the campaign succeeded and what it offers teams working with threatened buildings today.

The panel brought together Eric Reynolds, founding director of Urban Space Management and chair of SAVE; Leanne Tritton, founder and Executive Chair of ING Media; and conservation specialist and historian Alec Forshaw. SAVE director Henrietta Billings placed their accounts within the organisation’s wider campaign. Together, they showed how architectural research, engineering tests, planning advocacy, commercial analysis, fundraising and communications supported the same objective.

The decisive question was never whether Smithfield should be frozen in time. Markets are working buildings, and the General Market had already been altered, damaged and left largely unused.

The question was whether change would read the building’s history as an asset, or reduce it to a decorative perimeter around a substantially new commercial development.

That distinction is sharper as London Museum prepares to open free galleries within the General Market: a new use that will invite the public into the halls rather than remove most of their historic interior.

Why the General Market was vulnerable

Designed by the City of London architect Sir Horace Jones and built between 1879 and 1883, the General Market formed the western culmination of Smithfield’s sequence of market buildings. Jones, whose work also included Leadenhall Market, Old Billingsgate and, with John Wolfe Barry, Tower Bridge, treated the market as both architecture and infrastructure.

Behind ornate street elevations lay broad trading floors, a layered basement connected to the railway cutting, carefully controlled light and ventilation, and roofs carried on widely spaced iron Phoenix columns.

Its heritage value is therefore not confined to the façades. It lies in the

relationship between enclosure and span, street and hall, goods movement and railway engineering. The low roofs and louvres helped moderate temperature; the iron structure released the floor for trade; the roofscape formed what SAVE later described as a ‘fifth façade’. Dr Jenny Freeman’s research drew particular attention to the Phoenix columns: powerful built-up iron supports, spaced widely enough to create an unusually open trading floor. 

“In the history of nineteenth-century civil engineering, the wrought-iron Phoenix column played an intermediary role in the transition from the use of cast iron to the employment of steel. Jones, for example, turned to steel for the structure of Tower Bridge at the end of his career.” – Dr Jenny Freeman

Forshaw described the market’s importance through the contrast between its low-rise townscape and the colossal basements and interior spaces below and behind it. He compared Horace Jones’s original hall to a cathedral nave, noted that the General Market covers an area comparable to Oxford Circus, and drew attention to the spectacular Phoenix columns. These early structural components were a prototype use of the system in Britain and gave the trading hall its exceptional span and openness.

“These spaces lend themselves to imaginative other uses. The City’s idea to clear out the market for an office building was appalling. They were very much worth fighting for.” – Alec Forshaw

The General Market nevertheless occupied an awkward position in the heritage system. The neighbouring Central Meat Market is Grade II* listed, while the post-war Poultry Market is Grade II listed. The General Market was not listed. During the Second World War, a bomb destroyed its original central dome and fabric around Hart’s Corner. Reconstruction in the early 1950s replaced those elements, and further post-war alterations followed. That loss of original fabric counted against the building in assessments of national listing interest.

Although unlisted, the General Market retained considerable architectural and historical value. Much of Jones’s market hall survived, including its roof structure, long spans, iron columns and basements, while the western buildings remained integral to the Smithfield group and conservation area. Wartime damage and postwar reconstruction had made the market less complete than its neighbours, but no less worthy of protection. Without statutory listing, however, it was more vulnerable to redevelopment proposals that valued its façades over its historic interiors and structure.

SAVE’s campaign had to demonstrate, repeatedly and in detail, that the interiors, roofscape and spatial organisation were not incidental remnants, but the elements that made the building intelligible as a market.

The first major threat came from Thornfield Properties. Its proposal would have demolished the General Market and replaced it with offices. Following a public inquiry, the scheme was rejected in 2008 and conservation-led alternatives were requested. A second scheme, promoted by Henderson Global Investors, retained parts of the exterior but proposed removing most of the interior and replacing the glass roof with large office blocks. The City approved it in 2013; a second public inquiry followed in 2014.

Evidence, fabric and a credible alternative

SAVE’s response was not simply to oppose demolition. Eric Reynolds became a crucial witness, using his experience of market regeneration to show that a viable conservation-led scheme was possible. Working with architect John Burrell of Burrell Foley Fischer, SAVE developed an alternative that treated the existing building as the basis of the business plan. Burrell produced the drawings and plans for a scheme that reused the structure rather than replacing it with a new one. 

English Heritage first brought Reynolds into the campaign to put numbers to the alternative offered to the City Corporation. His evidence included extensive spreadsheets, research and a working business plan. It drew on his experience at Spitalfields, where he had helped preserve and regenerate the market. Costs, phasing, rents and early occupation were used to test whether repair and reuse could support one another over time.

“These fights are very hard. Everyone involved was up early and went to bed late.” – Eric Reynolds

Reynolds recalled the scale of the work behind the evidence, including five boxes of files and around 50 pages of material for the first inquiry.

English Heritage supported the conservation case at that stage. By the second inquiry in 2014, it had accepted the Henderson proposal as the only financially viable option. SAVE and the Victorian Society therefore had to demonstrate that a repair-led scheme could work against the position taken by Henderson, the City Corporation, the Greater London Authority and English Heritage.

Reynolds gave the railway ‘lids’ beneath the market as a telling example. Because the building stands over live railway infrastructure, costly replacement of the deck had been treated as an unavoidable liability. A specialist engineer was commissioned to test its capacity. The assessment showed that the lids were strong enough for the repair-led reuse scheme, allowing that presumed replacement cost to be removed from the viability calculation.

Technical investigation did not merely protect historic fabric; it changed the financial case.

The inquiry did not need to grant permission for SAVE’s proposal in order for it to be effective. Its purpose was evidential: to challenge the assumption that major demolition was the only realistic route. The inspector found the alternative viable, fundable and deliverable. Once a credible conservation-led option existed, the claimed necessity of sacrificing the halls became much harder to sustain.

The commercial case depended on physical evidence. Research showed that the surviving structure was architecturally sound and capable of repair and continued use, rather than requiring wholesale replacement. Dr Jenny Freeman’s study of Jones’s architecture was especially important. Her work on the historic Phoenix columns established their engineering interest and continuing structural role: they had supported the original market and were successfully used to carry the shallower replacement dome erected after the war. Read alongside measured studies of the spans, roof fabric, vaults and basements, this showed that adaptation could begin with repair rather than demolition. Reuse was credible on architectural as well as financial grounds.

In July 2014, the Secretary of State refused the Henderson scheme. The decision accepted that the western market buildings were integral to the wider Smithfield group and that the proposal would cause serious harm to the conservation area. Crucially, the benefits of the development were not judged sufficient to outweigh that harm, particularly when a credible alternative approach had been demonstrated.

Making a specialist case public

The public campaign translated this technical argument into something people could recognise and act upon. Petitions, public meetings, press work and fundraising widened the constituency for the building. The much-reported Lady Gaga protest, with lookalikes marching on Parliament beneath the line ‘You’d have to be Gaga to tear down Smithfield Market’, was playful, but its purpose was serious: to give a complex planning dispute an image that could travel.
Leanne Tritton led communications for the second inquiry and the successful campaign, working with developer Richard Upton. Their task was to translate a specialist planning and heritage case into a story that national and London media could report. Coverage of the Lady Gaga protest reached titles including The Times and the Evening Standard. Tritton recalled the difficulty of securing attention for a heritage story:

“In those days, as today, it’s very, very difficult to get mainstream coverage on heritage projects.” – Leanne Tritton

Leanne Tritton is the founder and Executive Chair of ING Media | SAVE

The response was to keep finding fresh ways into the story, enlist public figures and use social media to turn procedural moments into news. Communications did not replace the architectural, legal or financial case. It gave that case a public life and helped demonstrate that Smithfield’s future was not a private matter between a landowner, a developer and the planning system.

Fundraising was equally practical. Public inquiries require specialist witnesses, drawings and sustained professional work.

The campaign assembled enough money, knowledge and confidence to keep an alternative future in contention.

Upton’s involvement also connected the public argument to development experience, reinforcing the claim that conservation and commercial realism did not have to be opposing positions.

From contested market to public museum

London Museum’s proposal emerged after the City offered the market buildings as a potential new home in 2015. It was not SAVE’s alternative scheme, but it was made possible because the campaign had preserved the building and the possibility of reuse.

The £437 million conversion received planning permission in 2020. The General Market’s free galleries are scheduled to open in November 2026, with the Poultry Market phase following in 2028. The scheme restores the dome and historic shopfronts, brings the underground vaults into use and makes the space beneath the dome a social focus.

The difference from the rejected office schemes lies in how the building is used. The Henderson proposal would have removed most of the market interior to create large commercial floorplates. The museum depends on people entering the halls, moving through their spans and encountering the structure as part of the visit. It will have opening hours and operational boundaries, but free public access remains central to its purpose.

This public use gives the campaign a civic legacy beyond the financial value of the development. Smithfield records how London fed itself and moved goods, while its halls embody the work of traders, architects and engineers.

When the General Market reopens, success will lie in whether visitors can still understand Jones’s design and experience the building as part of London’s public life. Its survival shows what can happen when heritage specialists, designers, engineers, commercial advisers and communicators work from the same evidence.

 

Eric Reynolds is founding director of Urban Space Management and chair of SAVE Britain’s Heritage. A specialist in markets and mixed-use places, he played a key role in saving Smithfield Market.

Leanne Tritton Hon FRIBA is founder and Executive Chair of built-environment communications agency ING Media, and Chair of The London Society. She led communications for the second Smithfield inquiry and successful campaign.

Alec Forshaw has worked for more than forty years in the conservation of the historic built environment. His books include Smithfield Past and Present, 1970s London and New City: Contemporary Architecture in the City of London. He appeared as an expert witness at the 2014 Smithfield inquiry.

Henrietta Billings has directed SAVE Britain’s Heritage since 2016. A chartered town planner and former journalist, she leads its campaigns for threatened historic buildings.

John Burrell and Richard Upton also contributed to the campaign. Burrell developed the conservation-led architectural scheme for Burrell Foley Fischer. Upton worked with Tritton on the second inquiry campaign.

Dr Jenny Freeman contributed important research into Smithfield’s architectural and engineering significance. Her study of the historic Phoenix columns demonstrated their innovative construction, continuing structural role and importance to the market’s distinctive interior.

Research and reporting: صوفيا علوي شاهد is Beedier’s Marketing Agent and Content Developer. A Goldsmiths Media & Communications graduate, she works across research, editorial content, social media and video production.