Borough Market Trustees

The Borough Market is one of the oldest markets in London. It was originally held on London Bridge, but in 1276 it moved away from the Bridge to the King's Highway, then the main thoroughfare in and out of London, and now known as Borough High Street. In 1550 Edward VI granted the City of London a Royal Charter to hold a market in the borough of Southwark. At that date the market was still held in Borough High Street. However, by 1754 the volume of traffic using the Borough High Street had considerably increased and the market stalls hindered the traffic, By an Act of Parliament of 1755 the churchwardens, overseers of the poor and inhabitants of the parish of Saint Saviour, Southwark were charged with finding a new site for the market, empowered to buy the land and became Trustees of the Market. The site they chose was called The Triangle, which still forms the heart of the Market site. The act also decreed that the profits of the Market were to be used to alleviate parochial rates, a purpose for which they are still used today. The 1755 Act also established one hundred and twenty Commissioners and gave the churchwardens, overseers and inhabitants of the parish, as Trustees, the right to hold a market and levy tolls. The powers of the Trustees (whose numbers were limited to twenty-one in 1907) were modified by subsequent Acts of Parliament which gave them the authority to issue bye-laws, and prohibited any other market within one thousand yards of the Borough Market, and also further defined the site of the market. This was enlarged when the South Eastern Railway extension to Cannon Street and Charing Cross was built in 1862, and in 1932 when Three Crown Square was closed. The Market now covers four acres. Although the market originally sold all kinds of produce, by later Acts of Parliament its trade was restricted, as it is today, to fruit, flowers, vegetables, roots and herbs.