The General Market opened in 1883, although the domed ceiling had to be rebuilt due to bomb damage caused in World War TwoFor more than a century Smithfield's grandiose General Market bustled with traders selling goods from their stalls, until the 1990s when it was shuttered and left to decay. Now work to bring it back into use has provided a unique snapshot of London life from across the decades, from Victorian coffee shops to hidden vaults.
"But basically meat was so hugely popular and with fruit and vegetables being sold over in Covent Garden, this became actually a meat market... And meat was hugely popular right up until the 1970s, when it did start to dip and we were importing more meat," Mr Shaw says. "That's one of our big challenges, to stop the water coming in," the director of the museum project says. "So we're very close to being able to do that, fixing all the roofs and then the building needs one or two years at least to dry out.
Taking on such an enormous site has revealed new finds that are now being incorporated into the museum. On one side of the basement workers found a huge amount of boarding on a wall. After a few years of construction they finally took the plunge to reveal what was behind it.