At The Smithfield Institute

Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours Jack Hanlon gives a rare insight into the fascinating lost world of the Smithfield Meat Trades Institute… The correct way to sharpen a knife From the twenties until the eighties, Britain’s foremost technical college for butchers operated in an unassuming building on the corner of Saffron Hill just round the corner from Smithfield Market. Opening in 1924 and becoming part of the London County Council’s broader technical education project, the Smithfield Meat Trades Institute provided a range of courses ‘for persons engaged in the various branches of the meat trades, and also youths desiring to enter these trades’. The Institute offered a three-year course for over-sixteens resulting in a diploma from the National Federation of Meat Traders, alongside a range of short courses for younger students, and evening classes – on topics such as the theory and practice of refrigeration – for meat industry professionals looking to enhance their…