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Albert Island
Dec. 4th, 2025 07:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
dg_weblog_feedPress release - 03 December 2025
PREFERRED NEW BILLINGSGATE AND NEW SMITHFIELD MARKETS SITE IDENTIFIED IN LONDON’S ROYAL DOCKS
Billingsgate and Smithfield Market Traders, the City of London Corporation and the Greater London Authority have identified a preferred new site in the Royal Docks in Newham where both markets can locate together.
The relocation of the historic wholesale markets to the proposed new site of Albert Island fulfils the shared ambition of the City of London Corporation and Traders for a new site to be found within the M25, first set out in December 2024.
The move is subject to the successful passage of the Parliamentary Bill to provide for the cessation of the markets at their current sites. Planning permission from Newham Borough Council will also be needed to enable the markets to operate on site.
Not the press release - 04 December 2025
(because it pays to visit the actual places and not just cut and paste)
This is Smithfield Market, as pictured in September when I got to look inside as part of Open House.
The central gangway had been sluiced clean and the refrigerated counters were empty but it still reeked of meat. This splendid building is the East Market Hall, designed by Sir Horace Jones in 1868. There's been a meat market on this site for at least 800 years but there won't be after 2028 because the market's closing. The intention is then for the building to become a 'cultural venue', which'll no doubt be simultaneously excellent and excruciating.
This was Billingsgate Market.
Billingsgate lies just downstream of London Bridge and displaced Queenhithe as the City's premier catch-landing spot in the 16th century. The specialist fish market moved indoors in 1849, then shifted to this grand arcaded market hall (with gold-fish weathervanes) in 1875. But it was repurposed for offices in 1982 when the fish market moved out and is currently a "premier events space".
This is Billingsgate Market.
It's in Poplar between the A13 dual carriageway and the Docklands financial cluster. A fish thrown from the rear quay could easily hit Canary Wharf Crossrail station. The market building is an odorous warehouse with a bright yellow roof and opens daily at 5am (Sundays and Mondays excepted). It's surrounded by a lot of parking spaces for vans and fishmongers because land was really cheap round here in 1982. This market too is due to close in 2028 and be replaced by hundreds and hundreds of flats. You might think the City of London Corporation stands make a killing from selling 10 acres of prime development land but no, the land's owned by the borough of Tower Hamlets on payment of an annual ground rent stipulated as "the gift of one fish". Even the market's bin store is large enough to be the footprint of a whopping skyscraper, perhaps called Haddock Heights or Turbot Tower.
This is where Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets were due to go.
It's a site on Chequers Lane in Dagenham amid a seriously scuzzy Thamesside industrial estate. Dagenham Dock station is very close by. Specifically it's a patch of contaminated hardstanding once occupied by Barking Reach Power Station. It wasn't the ideal place for a new market because it's 10 miles east of the City of London, but it does have very good connections to the A13 so was well located for East London slaughtermen. The City of London Corporation selected this as their new market site in 2019, then last year announced they weren't intending to relocate anything and the market traders would have to do without. The site thus remains empty apart a whirly turbine and a huge spoil heap shaped like an artificial white volcano. Sorry the photo's not great but they don't clean the upstairs windows on the EL2 as often as they could.
Yesterday the City announced it had changed its mind.
This is where Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets are now due to go.
This is Albert Island, an isolated post-industrial leftover at the eastern end of the Royal Docks near Gallions Reach station. Ships once entered the Royal Albert Dock on one side of the island and the King George V Dock on the other side. Two of the locks are still operational although hardly anything passes through these days. To the north is Royal Albert Wharf where well over 1000 boxy flats are pretty much complete and occupied. To the south is Galleons Point where not quite so many flats were built in 2003. But the island inbetween remains desolate, abandoned and almost entirely empty, bar the odd decaying warehouse and scraps of overgrown concrete. The intention is that meat and fish be traded here instead.
This is a photo taken yesterday on Albert Island.
I was surprised to get even partial access to the island because the main access road from the Steve Redgrave Bridge is barriered off with signs warning of guard dogs on patrol. But the walkways across the lock from Royal Albert Wharf were open and accessible, just as they used to be when Capital Ring section 15 passed this way. That followed an estuary-side footpath which is now extremely sealed off but it means you may well have been to this dystopian landscape before, probably while very much looking forward to getting out again. On the far side of the lock I found a board listing anachronistic byelaws, an old sign warning about the importance of Rabies Prevention and a quayside where maritime folk once kept busy. It was only possible to walk a short way down the road before retreating, hemmed in between metal railings and peeling boards, but I can confirm that a heck of a lot of remediation needs to take place before anyone trades a lamb shank.
And this is why nobody's building flats here.
Albert Island lies directly on the flightpath into City Airport. What's more the end of the runway is only quarter of a mile away at this point so planes swoop low on approach and/or screech off overhead after takeoff. It thus isn't possible to build any kind of highrise building here, nor is the nearby roar of jet engines starting conducive to buying one. The long-term vision for Albert Island has therefore been for something non-residential, with ideas including a "state of the art commercial shipyard", a "River Centre for London", a sustainable employment magnet" and a research-based "Ideas Factory". Now it seems two of the City's centuries-old wholesale food markets will be filling much of the space, again with pretty decent ongoing transport connections, once a proper plan has been shaped and agreed.
Having visited yesterday I can confirm that Albert Island is a godforsaken wasteland and any redevelopment should be very welcome. How long it takes to transform is yet to be confirmed, and whether trading in dead animals improves the ambience I'll leave you to decide.
PREFERRED NEW BILLINGSGATE AND NEW SMITHFIELD MARKETS SITE IDENTIFIED IN LONDON’S ROYAL DOCKS
Billingsgate and Smithfield Market Traders, the City of London Corporation and the Greater London Authority have identified a preferred new site in the Royal Docks in Newham where both markets can locate together.
The relocation of the historic wholesale markets to the proposed new site of Albert Island fulfils the shared ambition of the City of London Corporation and Traders for a new site to be found within the M25, first set out in December 2024.
The move is subject to the successful passage of the Parliamentary Bill to provide for the cessation of the markets at their current sites. Planning permission from Newham Borough Council will also be needed to enable the markets to operate on site.
Not the press release - 04 December 2025
(because it pays to visit the actual places and not just cut and paste)
This is Smithfield Market, as pictured in September when I got to look inside as part of Open House.
The central gangway had been sluiced clean and the refrigerated counters were empty but it still reeked of meat. This splendid building is the East Market Hall, designed by Sir Horace Jones in 1868. There's been a meat market on this site for at least 800 years but there won't be after 2028 because the market's closing. The intention is then for the building to become a 'cultural venue', which'll no doubt be simultaneously excellent and excruciating.
This was Billingsgate Market.
Billingsgate lies just downstream of London Bridge and displaced Queenhithe as the City's premier catch-landing spot in the 16th century. The specialist fish market moved indoors in 1849, then shifted to this grand arcaded market hall (with gold-fish weathervanes) in 1875. But it was repurposed for offices in 1982 when the fish market moved out and is currently a "premier events space".
This is Billingsgate Market.
It's in Poplar between the A13 dual carriageway and the Docklands financial cluster. A fish thrown from the rear quay could easily hit Canary Wharf Crossrail station. The market building is an odorous warehouse with a bright yellow roof and opens daily at 5am (Sundays and Mondays excepted). It's surrounded by a lot of parking spaces for vans and fishmongers because land was really cheap round here in 1982. This market too is due to close in 2028 and be replaced by hundreds and hundreds of flats. You might think the City of London Corporation stands make a killing from selling 10 acres of prime development land but no, the land's owned by the borough of Tower Hamlets on payment of an annual ground rent stipulated as "the gift of one fish". Even the market's bin store is large enough to be the footprint of a whopping skyscraper, perhaps called Haddock Heights or Turbot Tower.
This is where Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets were due to go.
It's a site on Chequers Lane in Dagenham amid a seriously scuzzy Thamesside industrial estate. Dagenham Dock station is very close by. Specifically it's a patch of contaminated hardstanding once occupied by Barking Reach Power Station. It wasn't the ideal place for a new market because it's 10 miles east of the City of London, but it does have very good connections to the A13 so was well located for East London slaughtermen. The City of London Corporation selected this as their new market site in 2019, then last year announced they weren't intending to relocate anything and the market traders would have to do without. The site thus remains empty apart a whirly turbine and a huge spoil heap shaped like an artificial white volcano. Sorry the photo's not great but they don't clean the upstairs windows on the EL2 as often as they could.
Yesterday the City announced it had changed its mind.
This is where Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets are now due to go.
This is Albert Island, an isolated post-industrial leftover at the eastern end of the Royal Docks near Gallions Reach station. Ships once entered the Royal Albert Dock on one side of the island and the King George V Dock on the other side. Two of the locks are still operational although hardly anything passes through these days. To the north is Royal Albert Wharf where well over 1000 boxy flats are pretty much complete and occupied. To the south is Galleons Point where not quite so many flats were built in 2003. But the island inbetween remains desolate, abandoned and almost entirely empty, bar the odd decaying warehouse and scraps of overgrown concrete. The intention is that meat and fish be traded here instead.
This is a photo taken yesterday on Albert Island.
I was surprised to get even partial access to the island because the main access road from the Steve Redgrave Bridge is barriered off with signs warning of guard dogs on patrol. But the walkways across the lock from Royal Albert Wharf were open and accessible, just as they used to be when Capital Ring section 15 passed this way. That followed an estuary-side footpath which is now extremely sealed off but it means you may well have been to this dystopian landscape before, probably while very much looking forward to getting out again. On the far side of the lock I found a board listing anachronistic byelaws, an old sign warning about the importance of Rabies Prevention and a quayside where maritime folk once kept busy. It was only possible to walk a short way down the road before retreating, hemmed in between metal railings and peeling boards, but I can confirm that a heck of a lot of remediation needs to take place before anyone trades a lamb shank.
And this is why nobody's building flats here.
Albert Island lies directly on the flightpath into City Airport. What's more the end of the runway is only quarter of a mile away at this point so planes swoop low on approach and/or screech off overhead after takeoff. It thus isn't possible to build any kind of highrise building here, nor is the nearby roar of jet engines starting conducive to buying one. The long-term vision for Albert Island has therefore been for something non-residential, with ideas including a "state of the art commercial shipyard", a "River Centre for London", a sustainable employment magnet" and a research-based "Ideas Factory". Now it seems two of the City's centuries-old wholesale food markets will be filling much of the space, again with pretty decent ongoing transport connections, once a proper plan has been shaped and agreed.
Having visited yesterday I can confirm that Albert Island is a godforsaken wasteland and any redevelopment should be very welcome. How long it takes to transform is yet to be confirmed, and whether trading in dead animals improves the ambience I'll leave you to decide.
