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Around Old Billingsgate

December 6, 2024
by the gentle author

I am giving my last lecture about the astonishing East End photography of David Hoffman this Sunday 8th December at 2:45pm as the finale of the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild.

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In the week after the City of London Corporation voted to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets for good,  I present these evocative colour photos from the sixties.

Fish Porters at Number One Snack Bar next to St Magnus the Martyr

These intriguing photographs are selected from a cache of transparencies of unknown origin acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute. We believe they date from the nineteen-sixties but the photographer is unidentified. Can anyone tell us more?

Looking west along Lower Thames St and Monument St

Sign outside St Mary-At-Hill

Pushing barrows of ice up Lovat Lane

Passage next to St Mary-At-Hill

Carved mice on a building in Eastcheap

Old shop in Eastcheap

Billingsgate Market cat

Inside the fish market designed by Horace Jones

Old staircase near Billingsgate

The Coal Exchange, built 1847 demolished 1962

Part of London Bridge crossing Lower Thames St, now removed

The Old Wine Shades, Martin Lane

Sign of a Waterman, now in Museum of London

In All Hallows Lane

Derelict site next to Cannon St Station

Looking towards Bankside Power Station by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, now Tate Modern

Old Blackfriars Station

The Blackfriar pub

Sculptures upon the Blackfriar

Sunrise over Tower Bridge

Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

You may also like to take a look at

At the Fish Harvest Festival

Charlie Caisey, Fishmonger

Roland Collins’ Photographs

3 Responses leave one →
  1. December 6, 2024

    Why was the Coal Exchange pulled down? Could it not have been remodelled (as needed) and reused?

  2. George Kearse permalink
    December 6, 2024

    Carved mice on a building in Eastcheap? one could pass-by most every day of the week and never catch sight of it to be aware it’s existence and to then be intrigued to know the ‘Who? Why? What? Where? When?’ of it all.
    Sign of a Waterman, now in Museum of London Original Sign 1668? worthy a blog post all by itself highlighting similar signs throughout the ages.
    Derelict site next to Cannon St Station? the dullest of dawns sets this off nicely.
    Old Blackfriars Station, The Blackfriar pub, Sculptures upon the Blackfriar? draws us back to the 1960’s teens wanting more.
    A truly magnificent set of intriguing photographs by a photographer yet to be identified. Thank-you.

  3. Mark permalink
    December 6, 2024

    I feel another time traveling episode coming on, I maybe some time.
    Lush Technicolor. Thanks.

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