Pictorial Agency.
THE COAL EXCHANGE
Up to 1846 Billingsgate Fish-market contained only sheds and squalid buildings in which the fish trade was carried on. But in that year J. B. Bunning, the City architect, was employed to build a regular market. In 1872 the great increase of the trade and the necessity for further accommodation induced the Corporation to pull down this building and rebuild on a larger scale. Old Darkhouse Lane and Billingsgate Stairs were utilised to gain an increased site as the great bulk of the Custom House prevented any expansion eastward.
Sir Horace Jones was the architect. The building is of an Italian design and is of Portland stone with facings of yellow brick and polished grey granite plinths and wall linings. A long arcade faces Thames Street, and at each end there are pavilion buildings. Within, the basement has an area of about 20,000 superficial feet. On the ground floor the area is 39,000 square feet. The roof is on the Louvre glass principle carried on lattice girders of 60 feet span. There is a gallery with an area of 4000 feet; this is utilised for the sale of haddocks and dried fish.
St. Botolph, Billingsgate, stood against St. Botolph’s Lane, on the south side of Thames Street. It was repaired in 1624, but burnt down by the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to St. George, Botolph Lane. It stood against the Bridge Gate of the first London Bridge, just as the other three churches of St. Botolph stood at Aldgate, Aldersgate, and Bishopsgate. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1343.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who received it from Orgarus about 1181.
Houseling people in 1548 were 300.
Chantries were founded here: By and for Thomas Snodyland, late rector, who died 1349, in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of which Nicholas de Wansyngdon was chaplain, and exchanged it April 11, 1163—the King granted a licence for it December 15, 1371; by John Pickman, at the Altar of Our Lady, whose endowment fetched £10 in 1548, when Thomas Serle was priest, “of the age of 50 years, of good consideration and learning touching ordinary things”; by Thomas Aubrey, whose endowment fetched £8 : 6 : 8 in 1548, when Thomas Baynton was priest, “of the age of 60 years, of good consideration and learning”; by Roger Smallwood. Here was founded the Fraternity of Our Lady and St. John the Baptist. The endowment fetched £14 in 1548, when William Lucay was priest, “of the age of 50 years, a man of good conversation and small learning.”
The church originally contained many monuments, but most of them had disappeared by 1633. John Rainwell, mayor, 1426, had been buried in it; also Stephen Forster, mayor in 1454.
Some of the donors of charitable gifts to the parish were: Robert Fellows, of £25; William Fellows, of £25; Thomas Barber, of £6 : 18 : 6, and others of small amounts.
The parishes of St. George, Botolph Lane, and St. Botolph, Billingsgate, in conjunction with the other part of Billingsgate ward, maintained forty boys by subscription.