A new memorial marks the site of London’s Smithfield Market bombing
A memorial to a WWII attack on the Smithfield markets can be found next to a newish office block recently completed in Farringdon.
Nearly 80 years ago, on the late morning of 9th March 1945, a V2 rocket was fired from a site in the Netherlands at London. A few minutes later, at 11:03am, it hit the corner of the Smithfield markets in Farringdon. The attack was to become one of the worst civilian casualties of the V-2 rocket, with an estimated 110 people killed, and extensive damage to the whole area, including the railways that run under the market.
It’s reported that the death toll was higher than might have been expected as a fresh delivery of rabbit meat had arrived and people were queuing for a chance to buy some as a relief from wartime food restrictions.
The damage was also worsened by the railway underneath the market, which may have allowed the buildings to collapse into the crater that formed underneath it.
One of the many market traders destroyed during the attack was on the corner of the market building, J J Mack & Sons, and when the new offices were being built opposite the corner of the attack, the developers decided to name their offices after the meat trader.
They also included a memorial on the corner of the building to those who died in the attack. A wide brass circle in the ground, the memorial reads: “In memory of those affected by the V2 rocket attack on this site 8th March 1945”
The memorial’s design has significance, as you might suspect from the placement of some smaller circles inside the main one. They represent a slice through a V2 rocket, based on a drawing in the London Museum showing some of the internal piping that powered the rocket engines.
Yesterday the memorial was being carefully polished by one of the office cleaners.
And just a few hundreds meters away in Farringdon is the marker – low down in an old wall – for the first bomb dropped on London in WW1