St. Bartholomew The Great And Cloth Fair

St. Bartholomew-the-Great and Cloth Fair, Smithfield, 1877. The church escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666 but but fell into disrepair and was occupied by squatters in the 18th century. Cloth Fair had also degenerated into a slum by the 19th century. This photograph was commissioned by the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London to form part of a permanent visual record of historic buildings threatened with alteration or possible demolition in the 1870s and 1880s. The church was restored and rebuilt by Aston Webb in the late 19th century whilst the houses in Cloth Fair were demolished for sanitary reason by the Corporation of London in the early 20th century