 London Fruit and Wool Exchange - Spitalfields, London, UK
N 51° 31.140 W 000° 04.528
30U E 702895 N 5711597
The London Fruit Exchange and London Wool Exchange are both housed in the same building on the south side of Brushfield Street opposite Spitalfields Market. Trading ceased in 1991 with the exchanges opening in 1929.
Waymark Code: WMJGPV
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 11/17/2013
Views: 3
The
London and Landscape Blog carries an interesting article about the exchange
and photographs. This extract tells us:
Opening in 1929, when the volume
of imported produce coming through the docks more than doubled in the ten
years after the First World War, the mighty Fruit & Wool Exchange in
Spitalfields was created to maintain London’s pre-eminence as a global
distribution centre. The classical stone facade, closely resembling the
design of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Christ Church nearby, established it as a
temple dedicated to fresh produce as fruits that were once unfamiliar, and
fruits that were out of season, became available for the first time to the
British people.
After sixty years as a teeming warren of brokers and distributors, the
building languished when the Fruit & Vegetable Market moved out from
Spitalfields in 1991 and there were no wholesalers left to cross Brushfield
St and supplement their supplies of British produce from the auctions at the
Exchange. Since then, around sixty small businesses operated peaceably from
the building which through its shabby grandeur reminded every visitor that
it had once seen better days.
Yet it was only a matter of time before the notion of redevelopment arose,
and when ambitious plans were revealed over a year ago for a huge new
building to replace both the Exchange and the multi-storey car park behind
it – filling two entire blocks – a sense of disquiet was generated in
Spitalfields, especially among those who remembered the uneasy compromises
entailed in the rebuilding of the Market.
Few have been convinced by the homogeneous box that was proposed to stand in
place of the Exchange and many were disappointed when the creators of such
mediocrity dismissed the current structure as of negligible architectural
worth. In fact, the Commercial St end of the Exchange building closely
matched the window structure and red brick of the eighteenth century houses
in Fournier St, while the facade mirrored Christ Church itself. Since then,
a revised proposal has been forthcoming which retains the Brushfield St
frontage facing the Spitalfields Market but is far from being a design
worthy to face Nicholas Hawksmoor’s masterpiece of English Baroque upon the
opposite side of Commercial St.
And so, before it vanishes forever, I went over to take a look around and
savour the past glories of the City of London Fruit & Wool Exchange for the
last time.
Ascending from the grand entrance, a double staircase worthy of a ballroom
in a liner or fancy hotel leads you up to the auction rooms. Built as the
largest in the country, seating nearly nine hundred people, these
magnificent panelled chambers were each the height of two storeys within the
building. Fitted with microphones, which were an extraordinary innovation in
1929, possessing elaborate glass roofs that promised to simulate daylight –
even on dark and foggy days – to best illuminate the fruit, they were served
by high-speed hydraulic lifts to whisk samples of each consignment from the
basement in the blink of an eye. Too bad that a recent fire, occurring since
the redevelopment was announced, meant they could never be visited again.
Now the entrances to the most significant spaces which define this edifice
are sealed with tape and off-limits for ever, while charred parquet flooring
evidences the flames that crept out under the door.
Instead, I had to satisfy myself with a stroll around the empty top floor
through centrally-heated corridors maintained at a comfortable temperature
ever since the offices were all vacated two years ago. Everywhere I could
see evidence of the quality of this building, from the parquet floors which
extend through each storey, to the well-detailed brass fixtures and
high-quality Crittall window frames that were still in good order. Within
the building, hidden light-wells permit glass-ceilings to be illuminated by
daylight upon each storey. Peering into these spaces reveals the paradoxical
nature of this edifice which presents ne0-classicism to the street but
adopts a vigorous industrial-modernism within, employing vast geometric
shaped concrete girders to support the roof spans of the auction rooms below
and arranging rows of narrow metal windows in close grids that evoke Bauhaus
design.
From the top, I descended through floors of long windowless corridors lined
with doors, where an institutional atmosphere prevailed, hushing the speech
of those stepping outside their offices as they enter these strange
intermediary spaces that belong to no-one any more. My special curiosity was
to explore the basement which served as a refuge for the residents of
Spitalfields during the Blitz. It was here that Mickey Davies, an East End
optician known as “Mickey the Midget,” became a popular hero through his
work in improving the quality of this shelter. It had gained the reputation
as the worst in London, but later acquired the name “Mickey’s Shelter” in
acknowledgment of his good work. As a shelter marshall, Mickey witnessed the
overcrowding and insalubrious conditions when ten thousand people turned up
at this basement which had a maximum capacity of five thousand. He organised
medical care and recruited volunteers to undertake cleaning rotas. And,
thanks to his initiative, beds and toilets were installed, and even musical
entertainment arranged.
The vast subterranean network of chambers has been empty for twenty years
now – gloomy, neglected and scattered with piles of broken furniture.
Although partitions have been fitted to create storage rooms – where,
mysteriously, Rupert Murdoch recently installed his archive – the Commercial
St end of the building remains open and forlorn, with concrete pillars
adorned by graffiti. Fruit packers marked off batches of produce in pencil
on the wall here, and amused themselves by writing their names and making
clumsy doodles. In this lost basement, it is still possible to imagine the
world of Mickey Davies, where thousands once slept upon the floor while the
city burned outside.
From Brushfields St, the City of London Fruit & Wool Exchange appears
implacable – yet I discovered it contains a significant part of the hidden
history of Spitalfields that will shortly be erased, to leave just an empty
facade.
Name: London Fruit Exchange and London Wool Exchange
 Address: Brushfield Street
Spitalfields
London
United Kingdom
 Country: United Kingdom
 Is this exchange still active at this location: no
 Activity Period: 1929 - 1991
 URL: Not listed

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