Halmtorvet in 1905

If you look through the collection of historic photographs in the city archive you can find images that show just how and how much life in the city has changed through the modern period.

There have been posts here recently about major changes in the area around the old west gate of the city at the end of the 19th century, after the defences came down in the 1850s, and all those changes had knock-on consequences that are still playing through today.

The area just inside the old west gate had been a hay market - Halm Torvet - where citizens could buy hay and straw for the cattle and horses that were then kept in the city. There are paintings and early photographs that show dairy cattle kept in the densely crowded city and there were a large number of working horses that pulled carriages and carts and, by the late 19th century, cabs and trams. And all those animals needed hay for feed and straw for bedding.

After Rådhuspladsen - the city hall square - was laid out and the new city hall was built and completed, the name Halmtorvet was transferred across to a long but relatively narrow open space immediately west of the central railway station and on the north side of what was then a new meat market for the city … the area now generally known as Kødbyen or, Meat City but, if you write about trends or what is fashionable, it’s now called the Meatpacking District.

Work on building a new meat market began in the 1880s, on a new site away from more-densely populated parts of the city. Driving cattle and pigs and sheep into the city to be slaughtered was noisy and smelly and had an impact on people living nearby so the new site was outside the city walls and at first between the line of the railway and the bay and the nearest neighbour was a new gas works.

Øksnehallen, a market hall and the most impressive building, was added in 1901 and the White Meat yard in 1931-34 but I had not made the very obvious connection between a new hay market here and the meat market until I came across photographs of hay wagons lined up on Halmtorvet in 1905 and historic films of lorries waiting to deliver hay to the meat market in 1934. Of course, all those animals that were brought to the meat market to be slaughtered needed at least straw - if for no other reason than to absorb the waste and the blood in the pens and slaughter sheds - and there were large straw and hay markets here at Halmtorvet that were held on days every week through the 1930s.

You can find historic films of this early period of the meat market area - as long as you are not squeamish about thinking about where your meat comes from - so I should not have been surprised about seeing the evidence for the vast amount of hay and bedding straw that was needed in Copenhagen well into the modern period.

historic film of the hay market at Halmtorvet
historic film of the meat market