Hungerford Market

This lively street scene depicts Hungerford Market on the Strand with the old and dilapidated market buildings and a view down to the Thames. The corner of the London Fire Office can be seen at the left next to Thomas Olley’s diary advertising ‘Genuine Milk & Cream. Families Supplied’. Cabbages and other items are being sold at the left, and geese at the right. Behind the dairy is a building with a bust of St Edward Hungerford (d.1711), who established the market after his family town house, which formerly occupied the site, burned down. This site was soon to disappear. As Shepherd wrote in ‘London in the Nineteenth Century’ (1829-31), the book for which this design was prepared: ‘the whole is intended to be removed to make way for modern improvements, now become the order of the day’. Demolition began in 1831 and it was replaced with the New Hungerford Market. It is now the site of Charing Cross railway station.