Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The last of the Columbia Market
Next to the Square, on what is now a great empty site, Baroness Burdett Coutts built
the vast market hall, the Columbia Market. I wish I had recorded it for this topic before
demolition, as it was quite unique. No verbal description could convey the strangeness and
unlikelihood of it all - that great place like a medieval cloth hall, with a gatehouse and
cloisters. The building (also by H.A. Darbishire) belonged to the late 1860s, and had a tall
tower; the interior was a mass of tall piers, vaults, and tracery, and full of carved inscrip-
tions. Like Fonthill Abbey, nothing is left but a pile of rubble and its loss to London was
incalculable. Only a few pillars and a little ironwork remains here and there, and this I
