Metropolitan Cattle Market
United Kingdom legislation
The Metropolitan Cattle Market (later Caledonian Market), just off the Caledonian Road in the parish of Islington (now the London Borough of Islington) was built by the City of London Corporation and was opened in June 1855 by Prince Albert. The market was supplementary to the meat market at Smithfield and was established to remove the difficulty of managing live cattle at that latter site.
History
The market was designed by the corporation's architect, James Bunstone Bunning. He had previously drawn up plans to rebuild the cattle market at Smithfield, before the Corporation decided to remove the trade in live animals to a site outside the City itself.
The market originally covered 30 acres (0.12 km2) of the site and grounds of Copenhagen House, so named as the location of the Ambassador of Denmark's residence in the 17th century. Prior to being redeveloped these grounds housed a pleasure resort and tea garden. It occupied most of the land between Hungerford Road and Hartham Road (north), Caledonian Road (east), Brandon Road and Blundell Street (south) and York Way (west) and its construction cost the Corporation £300,000. Market Road, North Road, Shearling Way and Brewery Road were internal roads within the market area.
The site was chosen for its proximity to the goods yards of the newly opened Great Northern Railway and North London Railway to the north of King's Cross station. Livestock could be conveniently transported to the depots before being driven the short distance up York Way to the market or walked down from Holloway cattle dock and Junction Road railway station.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6825035. Authority coordinates are 51.546, -0.124. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1855.
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This entry incorporates text from “Metropolitan Cattle Market” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.