3-011-724 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Demolition of Hungerford Market: view looking towards the Strand, [London], 1862. 'The disappearance of Hungerford Market...is perhaps not a subject of much, if any, regret...On its site there is about to rise a grand West-end Metropolitan Railway terminus [Charing Cross station]...The structure which has been recently demolished occupied the site of a market-place built in 1608 by Sir Edward Hungerford...the old hall and a colonnade remained until about 1830...[when] the late building was erected...there was a dreary makeshift aspect even in the corridors of the quadrangles...But the car of the great railway Juggernaut has passed over the whole space and laid it desolate, as may be seen from our Engraving, which is taken from a point river-wards, and looking towards the Strand; the steeple of St. Martin's Church and the dome and ball of the Electric Telegraph Office peering over the houses, the back view of which occupies the centre of the picture, while the first arches of the London Bridge and Charing-cross Railway, which crosses the river at this point by a viaduct which is to supersede the Suspension-bridge, are to be seen creeping close up to the verge of the great thoroughfare which leads from Trafalgar-square to Temple-bar'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.