Everything in the Garden's rosy
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David Wilcox finds out that what detractors used to say is right flE \ew Covent Garden isn't like the old... it a lot bete
PROBABLY the best known of all the London markets is Covent Garden, or New Covent Garden to give it its correct title. It is our largest fruit, vegetable and flower market and is roughly the same size as London's other four big fruit and vegetable markets (Spitalfields, Stratford, Western International and Borough) put together.
When the new market opened in November 1974 it was national news, partly because of the cost of the new development — some £43m — but there was also an element of "it'll never be the same as the real Covent Garden". Those who moaned were right — it's been much better!
The New Covent Garden was in the news once again a few months ago, on the occasion of its fifth anniversary. This brought to the market visitors as diverse as Minister of Agriculture Peter Walker and Miss World.
But Covent Garden is less well-known as one of the biggest generators of commercial vehicle traffic in London, with around 5000 vehicles entering and leaving the market site every 24 hours.
And although Covent Garden is not usually thought of in transport terms, its was problems with transport at the old market that mainly prompted the move five years ago.
The basic part of the original Covent Garden was built in 1830 and, of course, was designed with horses, carts and barrows in mind. Throughput of the market grew and grew, and the introduction of the motor lorry did not help matters! • Congestion in the old narrow streets became chaotic, particularly as Covent Garden is on the edge of London's West End, and lorries heading for the market late in the evening were getting tangled up with theatregoers on their way home.
The streets surrounding the market were jammed with commercials waiting to make deliveries, and these were joined in the early hours of the morning by the buyers' vehicles. Kenneth McKenna, Covent Garden Market Authority's information officer, told me that drivers were often having to wait hours to make their delivery.
The scene inside the market was no better. The buildings, which had been randomly added over the years, were all on different levels and some of the yards and streets were still cobbled. The result was that any form of mechanised handling, such as forklifts, could not be used. So while the rest of the world moved on, time stood still in Covent Garden and the porters kept their barrows.
But in the late Sixties when the old market was nearing saturation point, a site owned previously by British Rail on the South bank of the Thames at Nine Elms in Vauxhall was purchased with the help of a loan from the Government.
The new site was designed with the experience of the old market in mind, and so is totally different — as CM found during an early morning visit.
To get into the new market site in a vehicle you have to pass through toll barriers. Since the beginning of this year everybody has had to pay to bring a vehicle in and there are no exceptions. The basic charge is £1 a vehicle for either a lorry or car, although regulars can buy a sixmonth season ticket for £25. Alternatively they can apply to the Market Authority for a trade card which reduces the entry fee to 50p a visit.
Although not particularly desirable, these entry fees do bring in a very valuable £300,000 a year which helps the Market Authority to repay the Government's loan. The construction of the New Covent Garden cost more than originally envisaged, and so these new charges were introduced in January to speed up repayments.
Once inside the market site, the scale of things is impressive. It covers 68 acres in a roughly triangular shape — the apex in the east and base to the west — and is bisected by a mainline railway running across the site on a viaduct.
The largest part of the market is the fruit and vegetable market — two long parallel buildings connected by two walkways at the upper level.
These each house a row of 75 trading positions on each side, giving 300 in all. Each trading position has a separate loading bay on the outside with its own shutter, then a warehouse space, then a selling frontage.
This opens on to the buyers' walk where they can inspect the produce. This layout is repeated on the other side of the building so that the complete market has two buyers' walks and four rows of trading units. Many of the bigger traders occupy two or three units.
The obvious advantage of this scheme is that all the buying takes place inside under cover, and all deliveries and collections can be made without the need for vehicles to enter a building or for the goods to be moved grea distances.
None of the loading bay! has loading banks and I .askeE information officer Kennetf McKenna why this is so. HE said that loading banks werE obviously considered, but it war eventually decided that it woulc be better to have everything or one level — the ground — sc that forklift trucks and othe mechanised handling equip ment could be used freely.
Virtually every trader has hir own electric fork truck fo loading and unloading vehicle: and with a smooth flat surfacE on one level these run all rounc the market giving tremendour advantages over the old bar rows.
Because they are workinc. outside in the middle of thE night, most of the time many a these forklift trucks are fitteE with plastic covers to keep thE operator warm and dry. A broac canopy protecting out over thE loading bay shutters also giver some protection against the ele. ments.
There are two forklift truck rental and leasing companies or the site, and many of the trader use their services.
For more general movemen. of produce around the site, therE are a number of small convertec electric ex-milkfloats that al.( popular with some traders.
This ability to use moderr mechanised handling method: has unquestionably speeded up movement in the market, saic Mr McKenna.
The other big difference foi transport operators at the NevN Covent Garden i8 the massive amount of space at the new site Compared with the jammec streets around the origina Covent Garden, the Nine Elm: site has plenty of room in termE of parking space, road space and loading space. A realisti• cally sized road runs round the fruit and vegetable market well as between the two paralle arms.
Also in the gap between the two buildings are some diago. nally marked parking spaces for vehicles waiting to get onto loading bay. On the southerr side of the site there is a coverec area where lorries can generally sort out their load ready for their next drop.
The market was designed tc cope with up to 6000 goodE vehicle trips into the market in 24 hours and a similar number out again. At present the total it about 5000 vehicles a day ol which 500 are delivery vehicles, 2500 are buyers; 2000 belong 3 wholesalers or people woring in the market, and the rest 311 into the "miscellaneous" ategory.
Deliveries of fruit and vegetbles begin at 11prrt, and rivers who arrive before this an wait for the market to open a separate park. In the early ours of the morning most of the lig vehicles arrive, many cornig up from the big fruit and egetable growing area in earby Kent.
At 4am the market opens to uyers, and most of the vehicles rriving tend to be the slightly mailer ones of greengrocers nd fruiterers. Most of the selrig is over by breakfast time, nd by lunchtime the market is lmost deserted.
At the Eastern end of the long arallel fruit and vegetable maret halls is the growers pavion. This is a useful supplement 3 the main selling area and aters specifically for the smaller rowers, such as market gareners. Here, there are 40 paring spaces marked on the found under cover, with a iosk on the corner of each pace.
The grower can park his ehicte on his space (rented for a ear complete with the kiosk) nd sell directly off the side of le lorry, using the kiosk for dministration.
This is far cheaper than renng a complete trading unit in le main buildings and suits the mailer growers.
Continuing eastwards, and assing under the viaduct which rosses the site, you come to the ower market. This is obviously ,uilt to a completely different lesign from the fruit and vegetble market.
The building is square and, in ontrast to the fruit and vegetble market, is equipped with 3ading banks and dock levelars. The reason for the flower larket having loading banks is imply that forklifts rarely need 3 be used in flower handling.
With little use of forklifts here is no real restriction on avels and so loading banks can le used to good effect, speeding ip loading and unloading.
Barrows and pump-trucks are he main handling equipment [sed in the flower market. Simiarly, the vehicles that run into -is market tend to be smaller nd lighter and are mostly vans. Ve noticed a lot of Honda Acty ans in particular, mostly be3nging to London florists.
On the extreme eastern orner of the market site is Maret Towers, an administrative ,uilding with twin 16-storey nd 21-storey towers. These
house offices primarily intended for organisations connected with the fruit and vegetable and flower trade, such as importers and dealers.
-The Covent Garden Market Authority also has its offices in this building. Other facilities in Market Towers are banks (including two Spanish ones), two pubs and a restaurant.
In the fruit and vegetable market there are several cafés and more pubs — all with opening times that may seem strange to the outside world. How would you like a light and bitter for breakfast?
Apart from these cafés, about the only facility I could find that was directly aimed at lorry drivers and hauliers operating into the market was a 24-hour diesel and petrol station near the main exit to the site.
Had the Authority considered some sort of accommodation or rest room for drivers? Kenneth McKenna told me that the idea had been considered, but abandoned on economic grounds. There just wouldn't be enough drivers stopping at any one time, he said.
"It would mostly be Continental drivers and we only get about 20-30 of those each night." The commercial viability of other such facilities is also restricted by the strange operating hours of the market.
On the market site there are a number of allied businesses who find it beneficial to be among their potential customers. These services are mostly down in the southwestern corner of the site (a part of the market where traders had earlier complained that they were being missed or forgotten) and include hauliers, prepackers, importers and exporters.
The success of the market can, perhaps, be gauged by the amount of trading space that is currently let in the trading halls. There is a total of 322,200sqft of space in the fruit and vegetable market, and when we visited it every single square foot was occupied.
The flower market (90,000sqft) also boasted 100 per cent occupancy, while there were just two or three vacant spaces in the growers' pavilion.
Despite this almost total utilisation, at no time is there any congestion, said Mr McKenna. Because there is plenty of space to move and handling methods are up to date, the whole process of coming to the markets, selling the produce and packing up again has contracted.
Whereas the working day used to stretch from 11 pm to mid-morning, most people are now on their way home before breakfast — a sure sign that the new site is so much more efficient.
In the period after the move from the original site, there were quite a number of traders who said they preferred the old home. But this can be put down mainly to nostalgia and is rarely said now the "new" market is five years old.
Certainly nobody seemed to have any real grouses as we walked round the site, and the general feeling may be summed up in a quote from the market's own newsletter: "The chorus girls used to go by in the Old Market, but, of course, the chorus girls didn't pay our rent."
Back with Kenneth McKenna, I asked him if, with the benefit of five years hindsight, he could see any fault in the planning or layout of the new market.
After some thought he could come up with just one point. "The loading bays could have been a little longer ideally" he said. "Some of the longest articulated lorries project on tc the roadway when they are backed onto the loading shutters. This is a bit of a nuisance rather than a problem, though.'
He agreed that if EEC propo. sals for increasing the maximum length from 15m to 15.5m were adopted in the UK then thiE could become rather awkward. but in comparison, still infiniteh, better than the situation tha. existed at the old market, Just as the original Coven. 'Garden outgrew its home, jE there a chance that the Nine Elms site too could become to small? Not really, replied MI McKenna.
Sales throughput is going ur yearly — it was £89m in the firs year of the new market fivE years ago and has since risen -tc £182m in 1977/78 — bu there is still plenty of capacip within each trader's unit.
Also, the actual amount o fruit and vegetables being con sumed in the United Kingdom not going up and it is mainl) price rises that are reflected ir the throughput figure increase.
A first-time visitor to thr market, like myself, expected E chaotic bustling place. In effect the opposite is true. Coven Garden is a scene of well organised efficiency. It realb does speak volumes for 'modern carefully planned sys tern and shows what can bi achieved when proper attentior is given to transport an handling matters.
Yes, it was expensive, an( the move south of the Rive Thames was painful for somr But it has proved well worth while and should stand as al example to the other Londor markets still cramped in thei original homes.