Islington's Business Design Centre has a history of festive family fairs in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Business Design Centre is a modern venue for conferences, exhibitions and other large events. Attracting almost one million visitors a year, it opened in 1986.
However, the history of this expansive facility in Islington goes back to the 19th century and includes a strong tradition of Christmas entertainments.
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For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, including 'Angel at Christmas' on 7 December, please click here.
The building was originally opened in 1862 as the Agricultural Hall for the Smithfield Club Cattle Show, an annual livestock exhibition held every December. The club had been founded in 1798, holding its first show the following year in Dolphin Yard, near Smithfield market. The show later moved successively to the Barbican area, Goswell Road and Baker Street before settling in Islington. It took place at the 'Aggie' (the hall's nickname) from 1862 until 1939.
Islington had long been famed for its pastures, providing grazing for dairy cows and for cattle on their way to Smithfield Market in the City of London a mile to the south. Urbanisation was swallowing up Islington’s farms by the time the Agricultural Hall opened. The Aggie and the nearby Metropolitan Cattle Market (opened in 1855) maintained the area’s links with its historical importance as Cow Town.
The hall’s roof of cast iron and glass, constructed by Heaviside of Derby, has a span of 125 feet. It covers a hall of 80,000 square feet (25,000 sq m), larger than the pitch at Wembley stadium. When it opened, it was one of the biggest exhibition halls in the world, bigger than the Crystal Palace and Alexandra Palace. In its first year, the Cattle Show attracted 135,000 people.
In 1864, the Islington Gazette observed that livestock shows were a fitting event for the lead-up to Christmas, “traditionally a season of abundance”.
The Aggie soon became the venue for another seasonal event, one that offered family entertainment in the Christmas and New Year period.
Billed as a ‘Grand Tournament, Hippodrome & Cirque’, it opened on Boxing Day in 1863. Another local newspaper, the Shoreditch Gazette, spoke in glowing terms of its “scale of magnificence hitherto unattempted in this country”.
The event featured 350 performers, 100 horses, 50 suits of armour and 60 musicians. Entertainments included steeplechases, chariot races, bareback riding, acrobatics, fire eating and lion taming demonstrations. The admission fee was sixpence “for a whole day’s entertainment!”
The Islington Gazette once again praised the venue, gushing that there was “no building equally well adapted for the purposes of a hippodrome and circus… the building is well lighted and free from those unpleasant smells that are offensively present in other buildings dedicated to equestrian amusement.”
However, the entertainments were not without mishaps, particularly involving wild animals.
In 1864 a lion keeper's hand was amputated after he was dragged into the beasts’ cages at feeding time. In order to rescue the keeper, colleagues tried to inflict temporary blindness on the lions with blows to their eyes. The animals performed later that day.
In 1866 a crocodile escaped, lashing his tail and snapping violently at everything in his way. Fortunately the rampant reptile was recaptured before anyone was injured.
From 1879 yet another series of December family shows were held at the Agricultural Hall. Known as World's Fairs, they took place from just before Christmas for 5-6 weeks over the holiday period.
These shows were designed to be a modern version of outdoor travelling fairs. They included freak shows, animal menageries, a flea circus, boats floating on ponds and reconstructions of well known places and scenes.
The 1882 World's Fair at the Aggie featured a small gauge train running through a tunnel, intended to illustrate the newly proposed idea of a railway tunnel under the English Channel. This can be seen in the bottom right corner of the poster for the 1882 event. The full poster is reproduced at the top of this blog post, while the Channel Tunnel detail is expanded below.
The poster advertising the 1885 World’s Fair names the venue as the Royal Agricultural Hall for the first time, after Queen Victoria bestowed it with the ‘Royal’ accolade.
Another poster from the 1880s features a comfortably-off middle class family in the illustration. This communicates the event’s appeal as family entertainment, while also portraying the kind of clientele that it hoped to attract.
Queen Victoria supported a number of events at the venue. These included attending the Workmen’s International Exhibition in 1870 and sending a Collie and three Pomeranians to the first Cruft’s Dog Show, held there in 1891 (it is said that one of the Queen’s dogs tied for first place).
Charles Cruft, a dog biscuit salesman who lived nearby in Highbury Grove, organised his dog show at the Aggie from 1891 until he died in 1938.
Over the decades many other events took place at the Royal Agricultural Hall, right across the year. These included the Royal Tournament, circuses, a six day walking event, medieval jousting, Roman chariot races, sports events and motor shows.
Towards the end of World War II the main part of the Aggie was requisitioned by the Post Office after the sorting office at Mount Pleasant was damaged by a bombing raid. The Post Office remained in the hall until 1971. After its departure, the hall fell into disrepair and was threatened with demolition for many years.
The reinvention of the Aggie as the Business Design Centre in 1986 was the brainchild of businessman Sam Morris (1917–1991).
Today, the BDC attracts more than 900,000 visitors a year to over 130 events annually, including the London Art Fair, HIX and the Surface Design Show. In October 2024, it was sold by the Morris family to Excel London, a subsidiary of ADNEC Group.
The BDC's entrance on the east of the building (the Upper Street side) was heavily modified in the 1980s.
However, the western side (on Liverpool Road) retains the original Victorian façade, complete with its brick turrets.
The World's Fair continued to provide family entertainment at Christmas time at the Aggie well into the 20th century. This extract from the Islington Gazette of 24 December 1921 captured its festive appeal:
“In this gigantic show of shows our borough once more lives up to its ancient title, “Merrie Islington”, and the villagers can enjoy skating and dancing, feasting and frivolity, innocent fun and care-free laughter to their hearts’ content.”
The Business Design Centre (formerly the Royal Agricultural Hall) is one of the stops on my Angel at Christmas walk, scheduled for Saturday 7 December 2024 at 11am. For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks (also including A Christmas Carol in the City of London on Friday 27 December at 2pm), please click here.
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