Fleet Market

Names

  • Fleet Market

Street/Area/District

  • Fleet Market

Maps & Views

Descriptions

from A Dictionary of London, by Henry Harben (1918)

Fleet Market

Erected over the course of the Fleet or New Canal, after it had been enclosed and arched over, above Fleet Bridge, 1737 (Rocque, 1746–Greenwood, 1827).

It had stood formerly on the bank of Fleet Ditch (Hatton, 1708).

For corn, etc.

Removed about 1829–30, for the formation of Farringdon Street.

from Lockie's Topography of London, by John Lockie (1810)

Fleet-Market,—situate between Ludgate-hill and Fleet-st. where the numbers begin and end, viz. 1 and 98, it extends to Holborn-bridge, Snow-hill.

from London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, by Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham (1891)

Fleet Market, for meat and vegetables, occupied the centre of the whole length of what is now Farringdon Street. On the removal of the Stocks Market in order that the present Mansion House might be erected on the site, the City authorities decided to arch over that portion of Fleet Ditch between Fleet Street and Holborn, which had become an almost insufferable nuisance, and build a new market there. An Act of Parliament was obtained, the ditch covered over, 1733, and the market constructed on it and opened, September 30, 1737. The builder was George Dean.1 It comprised two lines of shops of one storey high, with a covered walk between them lighted by skylights. The fruiterers had their stalls at the Fleet Street end. Fleet Market lasted till Michaelmas 1829, just ninety-two years, when it was closed and the site cleared in order to form Farringdon Street; but for some time before its removal the shops and sheds wore a very neglected and dilapidated aspect. [See Farringdon Market]


1 A Plan and Elevation of Fleet Market was published in 1737.