Fish Market, Bell Street

History

Out of the street and into a shed

Fish had long been sold in the open at Dale End. In April 1851 the fishmongers moved into the Market Hall. Within twenty years the wholesale trade needed more room. The Victoria County History says a wholesale fish market was opened at the corner of Bell Street in 1869, and on 14 July 1870 Alderman Phillips laid the first stone of a new fish market hall there.

It was not much to look at. Showell’s Dictionary of 1885 called it “a rather plain-looking erection, of the open-shed style of architecture”. It covered just 715 square yards.

Fish by the trainload

The fish came by rail, mainly from the east coast. Showell put the daily supply at between 50 and 200 tons, and on one June day in 1879 Grimsby alone sent 238 tons. The dealers were not happy with their shed. In February 1878 their association proposed building a Fishmongers’ Hall of their own, though it never came to anything.

The Council answered by buying land in Bell Street, Lease Lane and Spiceal Street, in 1878 and 1882, for £25,070. A new market went up at the Lease Lane end, over a sub-basement. On 6 October 1885 it was formally opened as a daily wholesale market for fish, game and poultry.

While the extension was being dug, workmen found a passage cut in the sandstone 8 or 9 feet down: 24 feet long, 7 feet high and ending in a circular shaft. What became of it is not recorded.

Cold storage

The Corporation meant to rebuild the old shed too, but in April 1886 the neighbours’ rights of light stopped it. Instead the old market was extended over the shop between them to join the new one. The basement was leased to the Linde British Refrigeration Company as a cold store, and a well and a chimney stack were built. On 3 July 1888 the whole Bell Street market was made wholesale only. The retail fishmongers kept their stalls in the Market Hall across the street.

The same spot, then and now

1888–1913

Today

By then the Corporation had spent more than £44,000. A 715-square-yard shed had become a market of about 1,600 square yards with refrigeration below. Its historian, C. A. Vince, saw in such spending Birmingham’s growing importance “as a centre for the distribution of food-supplies over a large district”. A postcard of the 1910s shows the market’s gabled front at the top of the Bull Ring, with Nelson’s statue and the Market Hall behind.

First to go

The fish market was among the first buildings to fall when the Bull Ring was rebuilt. It was demolished in 1958, at the start of the clearance for the Inner Ring Road and the Bull Ring Centre, and Bell Street became the westerly carriageway of the new ringway. Losing it was one of the reasons the city built new Wholesale Markets on Smithfield, where new fish, meat and poultry markets opened in 1974.

The Bull Ring Centre itself came down in 2000. The site now lies inside the Bullring shopping centre, by Rotunda Square and the top of Spiceal Street. Where Grimsby’s catch was once sold by the ton, shoppers now cross the square.

Why it disappeared

Road building · Redevelopment

It stood in the way of the Inner Ring Road and the new Bull Ring Centre, and was demolished in 1958, at the start of the clearance. Its trade later moved to the new Wholesale Markets on Smithfield, where fish, meat and poultry markets opened in 1974.