No, this is not the Columbia Road flower market we know today. This was a short-lived vast gothic market place built in the Bethnal Green in the mid-19th century to serve the East End.

The project was financed by philanthropist (and for a time Britain’s richest woman) Angela Burdett-Coutts and represented an attempt to get the costermongers off the streets.

The building, designed by Henry Darbyshire, was built in 1869, constructed of yellow brick with Portland stone cornices and a green slate roof.

It consisted of four blocks of buildings with arcades built around a central quadrangle which was open to the sky and featured some 400 stalls located under cover. There were also a series of shops with residences located above and a clock-tower which sounded every quarter hour.

The market, which sold fresh produce, was run by Burdett-Coutts’ secretary and future husband (they married in 1881) William Burdett-Coutts who built connections with a fishing fleet to supply its vendors.

He had planned a rail link with Bishopsgate to serve the market but that never happed and competition from Billingsgate and other markets – and the fact the costermongers preferred the streets – eventually saw it go out of business. It closed only a relatively few years later in 1886.

Taken over for a short time by the City of London Corporation, it was returned to the Baroness in 1874, briefly reopened 10 years later, then, according to The London Encyclopaedia, let out as workshops before finally being demolished in 1958.

A few remnants, including some rather grand iron railings and lion statues, remain.