Meat merchants wield centuries-old regulation to frustrate new Museum of London

Two thousand years of historical past will probably be explored as by no means earlier than at a newly unveiled Museum of London. However it’s the capital’s historical past that’s proving a stumbling block to the £337mn venture’s timetable, as meat merchants at Smithfield market wield a centuries-old regulation to dam entry to half the location.

The Metropolis of London Company, the traditional native authority of the Sq. Mile, is landlord of the disputed venue the place the London Museum — its new identify — will finally have greater than double the show house obtainable at its present house in a traffic-blighted nook of the Barbican complicated.

Plans for the brand new venue introduced final week element the ample room to showcase a number of the 7mn treasures beforehand locked away in storerooms, amongst them the Cheapside Hoard, the world’s best assortment of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewelry. The brand new website sits alongside Farringdon station, the place the long-delayed Crossrail line is about to ship a surge in commuters.

The venture is likely one of the greatest and most complicated museum developments in Europe. Earlier than the surveyors and designers arrived, little was identified concerning the construction of its new house, the outdated Normal Market constructing at Smithfield, which has a working rail line working via its decrease flooring and required in depth renovation to make secure.

The plans embody shifting the contents of the museum’s outdated constructing — amongst them 20,000 skeletons conserved from each period of London’s historical past — whereas navigating the fallout from the pandemic. This included inflated building prices and the lockdown challenges of renovating a part of its new website.

The general public launch has been bumped from 2022 to 2024, and now to 2026. “We’re opening a lot later than anybody anticipated,” mentioned Sharon Ament, the museum’s director. “We didn’t know, and the Metropolis didn’t know, the complexity of the constructing. After we knocked down a wall, we discovered a sequence of vaults working all the way in which beneath the location that no person knew about. It was extraordinary.”

However the opening has additionally been put again by an intractable dispute between the company and the meat merchants of Smithfield, the place livestock has been delivered to market since a minimum of the twelfth century. The deadlock shines a lightweight on the peculiar anachronisms of a number of the Metropolis’s oldest establishments — and the impression they proceed to have on Twenty first-century growth tasks.

The redevelopment of the long-vacant Normal Market constructing, as soon as a fish-trading centre, represents solely the primary section of the brand new museum. Within the second stage, the museum will take over the adjoining Poultry Market. However this constructing continues to be totally occupied by working merchants, a few of whom have household hyperlinks with the meat market going again generations.

One dealer who requested to not be named mentioned: “It’s an exquisite place for us to be. Individuals come and go to. We’re in the suitable place — in the midst of every little thing.”

The Metropolis authority is backing the museum transfer with funding of almost £200mn. It’s asking the merchants, its tenants on the location, to affix the 2 different massive London markets — Billingsgate and New Spitalfields — by decamping to a brand new facility 14 miles to the east at Dagenham Docks. However the Smithfields wholesalers, expert at putting a discount, are sad with the phrases of the deal provided to them. And because the market’s function is protected by royal constitution, shifting it requires an act of parliament.

With out an settlement between the company and the merchants, such a invoice is unlikely to succeed. That offers the tenants a robust hand within the negotiations, which have now floor on for 3 and a half years.

The company declined to touch upon the talks however mentioned it “stays dedicated” to working with the tenants of all three markets to realize the transfer. “We intend to deposit a personal invoice to the Homes of Parliament later this yr for approval to maneuver the markets,” it mentioned in an announcement.

Prof Tony Travers, an professional in city authorities on the London Faculty of Economics, mentioned: “It’s historical past battling itself. The company is working on the idea of laws and methods of doing issues which can be from the premodern period, earlier than the evolution of latest authorities techniques.” 

On account of the impasse and delays, the museum has needed to recast its plans in order to have the ability to open the primary section to the general public in 2026 with out, as but, setting a date for the opening of the later section. Development of the museum was initially to be put out as one tender; now, the Poultry Market will probably be tendered individually.

Ament says the workforce was working via the impression of delays on building prices and, extra lately, of hovering inflation. “We’ve obtained a price range and there are pressures on it. [But] we’ll make it work.”

The Normal Market, topped by an enormous single-span concrete dome, is popping out to be “magnificent” in its new guise as a museum as it’s introduced again to life, she mentioned. “Each time I take folks across the website, they’re simply get blown away.”

As for the stalemate on the neighbouring Poultry Market, the workforce can solely wait — primed — for a breakthrough. “We’ve got all of our plans and we’re able to go. As quickly because the deal is finished between the Metropolis and the market merchants, we’ll swoop in.”