Dwellings Gallery

A Fish Auction in Columbia Market

In 1869 Baroness Burdett-Coutts paid for the building of the great Columbia Market (for fish) between Hackney and Bethnal Green Roads on the site of Nova Scotia Gardens, a squalid area of tenements and hovels and dust heaps. The cost of building the market was estimated at 200, 000. It was a philanthropic enterprise to make a clearance of the slum dwellings which clustered so thickly in the area but also to help the local people to have supplies of cheap fresh produce. Lack of support from wholesalers and small traders who preferred the open streets ensured its failure and it closed in 1885 and eventually became a bit of a white elephant and was demolished between 1958 and 1966"

© Mary Evans Picture Library 2015 - https://copyrighthub.org/s0/hub1/creation/maryevans/MaryEvansPictureID/10217312

Village Scene - Ivory Coast - 1940s

Village Scene - Ivory Coast - 1940s - French West Africa was a federation of eight French colonial territories in Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Dahomey and Niger. The capital of the federation was Dakar. The federation existed from 1895 until 1960. The houses are raised on stilts (pile dwellings) to protect from flooding. This is also obviously a coastal or riverside community as there are large fishing nets drying on poles close to the houses. Pile dwellings can still be found in the Ivory Coast in places such as Ebrie Lagoon. Date: 1947

Great Eastern Railway's Locomotive works at Stratford

A view along the north side of the Great Eastern Railway?s Locomotive works at Stratford (East London) May 1864 with William Henry Maw, then Head of the Drawing office, seated on the axle of a carriage or wagon wheel set, with his colleague James Kitson further back. In the background is The Railway Tavern public house (which is still extant) and dwellings in the Angel Place area. Date: 1864

© The Institution of Mechanical En