Spanning many years and fifteen thousand square metres, Borough Market is one of London's most celebrated regeneration stories. Commissioned by the market's trustees to revitalise a site in serious decline, we transformed a complex network of Victorian structures, railway viaducts and open spaces into one of the world's most visited food markets and a catalyst for the wider regeneration of Southwark.
“The very best food market in the world”
Named by Food & Wine’s panel of experts
Floral Hall
1. A feature of Borough Market
The Floral Hall is one of the most celebrated features of Borough Market today, but its story begins long before it arrived on Stoney Street.
2. Where it began
The Floral Hall you see at Borough Market today started life here, at Covent Garden, where it stood for over a century as part of the Royal Opera House complex. Designed by E.M. Barry and completed in 1860, the ornate cast iron and glass structure was one of Victorian London’s most celebrated buildings. When the Royal Opera House began its redevelopment in the 1990s, the Floral Hall was de-listed, dismantled and left in a storage yard in Wales for over 15 years until we bought it for £1!
3. Cataloguing History
Before the Floral Hall could find its new home at Borough Market, someone had to make sense of what remained. We visited the storage facility and methodically numbered each individual component, cataloguing the parts so that the complex Victorian structure could be accurately reconstructed on site.
The components were then refurbished, restored and recast to enable the reimagination of this special heritage asset.
4. Rebuilt, piece by piece
Reassembling the Floral Hall was as much an act of craftsmanship as construction. Working from Thierry’s numbered catalogue, the cast iron components were pieced back together on Stoney Street, with a contemporary extension added to the rear to house a restaurant, market units and storage. Opening up the basement spaces below revealed cellars with bomb damage repairs dating back to the Second World War. The portico, once de-listed when its future was uncertain, was subsequently re-listed. A building that came remarkably close to being lost forever, now one of the most photographed spots in London.
A market of specialists
Borough Market is home to over 100 traders, from Neal’s Yard Dairy and Brindisa to independent fishmongers, butchers, bakers and spice merchants. What makes it remarkable is the range – artisan cheese makers alongside fresh pasta vendors, rare breed meat next to exotic fruit from around the world. Every trader has a story and a specialism, and the market was designed to give each of them the space and setting to tell it.
Some traders have become Borough institutions in their own right. The enormous paella pans of Bomba Paella at Furness Food Hut draw one of the longest queues in the market every single week, while Brindisa’s chorizo rolls have been stopping people in their tracks since the market first opened. But beyond the icons, there is always something new to discover. The traders change with the seasons, the offer evolves, and no two visits ever feel quite the same. The carousel below is just a glimpse of what you will find on any given day.
Some traders have become Borough institutions in their own right. The enormous paella pans of Bomba Paella at Furness Food Hut draw one of the longest queues in the market every single week, while Brindisa’s chorizo rolls have been stopping people in their tracks since the market first opened. But beyond the icons, there is always something new to discover. The traders change with the seasons, the offer evolves, and no two visits ever feel quite the same. The carousel below is just a glimpse of what you will find on any given day.
Behind the design
Drawn from the inside out
Before any technical drawings were produced, our hand sketches tested and communicated the vision for Borough Market. Working through the Victorian ironwork, the arched roof structures, the green cast iron columns and the relationship between traders and visitors, these drawings capture something that CAD never quite can — the feeling of being inside a space that is alive. Each sketch is a conversation between the architecture and the people it is designed for
Understanding the whole picture
Borough Market is not one building but a complex layering of structures, streets and spaces that grew organically over centuries beneath the railway viaducts of London Bridge. Before we could design anything, we had to understand all of it. These drawings show how we mapped the site, the surrounding context, and the relationship between the market and the wider context, from the intimate scale of the market floor to Borough’s position within the fabric of Southwark and the Thames.
A catalyst for local businesses
When we began work in 1996, you wouldn’t walk past here at 2am unless you could run quickly, as Borough Market’s own managing director once put it. Today the surrounding streets are lined with independent businesses, restaurants and creative enterprises that have grown up around the market’s success. The regeneration rippled outward in ways that went far beyond the site itself.
History in context
1. A market with a thousand years of history
Borough Market has traded on this site since at least 1014, making it one of the oldest food markets in the world. The Victorian era brought new ambition to the site, with ornate iron and glass structures built to serve a growing city. But the market’s history has never been straightforward. Fires, floods, wartime bombing and decades of decline all tested it. It endured all of them. When we were commissioned in 1996, we were inheriting something that had already survived almost everything.
2. The wholesale years
By the early twentieth century, Borough Market had become one of London’s most important wholesale hubs, its streets and covered spaces packed with traders, porters and produce every morning before the rest of the city had woken up.
3. Before the restoration began
These photographs show Borough Market as it was when we began our work in the late 1990s. Years of neglect had taken their toll on the market; the roofs were deteriorating, the structures were tired, and the market was in serious decline. What these images show is not a lost cause. They show a place worth saving. That was the starting point for everything that followed.
Impact
25m+
Visitors a year now flock to Borough Market – a direct result of the regeneration that kickstarted the wider transformation of Southwark.
223K
Meals redistributed to over 20 London charities feeding vulnerable people.
157t
Of surplus food rescued from waste since 2014, through their Plan Zheroes partnership.
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