Victorian Market Halls, Ornamental Iron and Civic Intent

This article focuses on the relationship between ornamental iron and the civic in British market halls, a subject which has been overlooked in the existing literature on their architectural development. Like many other forms of nineteenth-century retail architecture — shops, bazaars, arcades and department stores — market halls embraced the new architectural possibilities suggested by iron: increased floor-spans were made possible by wrought-iron joists, which could span greater distances than timber ones; the strength of cast-iron columns allowed larger openings in the external walls; and the increased availability and lower cost of glass meant that these openings could be glazed, allowing greater visibility of commodities. Yet, unlike much Victorian retail architecture, which was usually privately financed, market halls were explicitly articulated as public spaces. As such, there were problems in assimilating iron-and-glass structures into established notions of public architecture. In 1878, The Building News, in a discussion of London’s market buildings, argued that they should be ‘different from huge railway sheds and Crystal Palaces’ because their status as public buildings required some form of ‘artistic’ treatment. For many architects of market halls — in common with other new building types in the Victorian period, such as pumping stations, railway stations, exhibition halls and warehouses — the solution lay in a dual architectural identity: an exterior structure built in conventional building materials such as stone and brick, harmonizing with existing urban architecture; and an interior space supported by an independent iron-and-glass structure.