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Unit price: £21.95
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Unit price: £20.00
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If you want to eat the best quality meat, poultry and game, you need to come to Smithfield. And if you want the very best of the very best, you visit Keevil and Keevil – Smithfield’s longest established butcher. Each working day at our shop, we welcome hundreds of traders, suppliers, restaurant buyers and of course, Joe Public. They all come to us because they know we buy direct from the market’s finest meat suppliers ‘on the day’. So they get the best meat on their plate when they want.
Now, you don’t have to come to us in person (but please feel free to if you can!). Keevil and Keevil’s online shop offers all the meat available in our shop, and some. Our specially designed boxes ensure the meat you choose arrives in perfect condition, kept chilled fresh or still frozen. And because of our buying power, trading relationships and reputation you benefit from the best possible market prices. Which also leaves a nice taste in your mouth.
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Smithfield is the UK’s oldest, biggest and best meat market. (Keevil and Keevil have been an ever-present member, in one form or another from the beginning.) So you’re more or less guaranteed to find the meat you are looking for, subject to hunting restrictions and seasonal availability.
We’re well known for our beef and steaks. Other butchers have great reputations for their poultry, pork, lamb or game. We have longstanding relationships with all of them and trade with them on a daily basis. So, when you place an order, our pickers will simply find the best available source of the cut you’re after, on that particular day. This guarantees that the meat you’ll get in your Keevil’s box is of outstanding quality and therefore represents the best value.
The word Smithfield originates from the Saxon for ‘smooth field’ and, indeed, was originally a flat grassy area just outside the city walls of London. Before the Saxons, the Romans used it as a burial ground.
By the time of the Norman invasion it had evolved for agricultural use and became well known in medieval England for horse trading. Flanked by Elm trees, Smithfield was also notoriously used for public executions until the 18th Century; two of the most notable historical figures who died here being Scottish rebel William Wallace, in 1305, and Wat Tyler during the Peasants Revolt of 1381.
1123 Henry I granted permission for a priory to be built at Smithfield. The resulting St Bartholomew-the-Great is the oldest parish church in London.
1150 Horses, cattle, pigs and pheasant are first recorded as being traded at Smithfield.
1381 The Corporation of London banned animal slaughter within the City walls, this saw the development of the livestock trade at Smithfield.
2nd September 1666 Because of their proximity to the City wall, and a fortunate change in wind direction, buildings in the Smithfield area survived the Great Fire of London. The fire stopped at Pye Corner, just 200 metres from the current market.
1757 The New Road was built to ease congestion; previously Oxford Street and Piccadilly were the only two roads from the West into London on which cattle could be driven. Today the New Road has become Marylebone Road which in turn leads into Euston Road, Pentonville Road and City Road. Over time, tracks that were used as ‘drovers’ ways’ - taking stock into and out of Smithfield - formed a framework for other roads that now surround the market.
1844 Annual meat sales at Smithfield total £8 million.
1852 The Smithfield Removal Act was passed by Parliament, as the location of the open-air market had become a public nuisance.
June, 1855 The Metropolitan Cattle Market was established at Copenhagen Fields, Islington, and was opened by the Prince Consort. However this soon became unsuitable as it wasn’t central or large enough.
24th November, 1868 The new Central Meat Market was opened at Smithfield. Designed by Horace Jones, who was also responsible for Tower Bridge, it was a huge building covering 8 acres and was typical of the brilliance and boldness of Victorian Architecture. It included an underground area linked to railway lines, so livestock and butchered meat could be transported via train. Constructed with stone, slate, cast iron and glass it cost £993,816 - a staggeringly large sum for the time.
30th November, 1875 The Poultry Market – which was built in the same style as the Central Meat Market opened. Today it is the only one of the original buildings still in use.
11th May 1941 In the last major night raid of WWII on London, a Keevils employee named Mears was killed while on fire-watching duty.
8th March 1945 Just two weeks before the end of the V2 strikes, one of the fearsome rockets hit Smithfield at 11.30am causing 110 deaths.
22nd January 1958 The whole of the poultry and general markets were destroyed by a fire which burned for four days, spreading through 2.5 acres of underground tunnels and storerooms. Over 1000 fire-fighters, from 58 London fire stations, fought the blaze. Keevils who had warehouses nearby, and the use of other market premises, were able to continue trading. Other less fortunate traders had who had lost their shops were forced to move to a temporary adjoining market named ‘The Village’, where they would sometimes have to share stalls with competitors.
5th July 1963 The newly re-built market was opened. It was designed by Sir Thomas Bennett at a cost of £2 million, and incorporated a new domed roof. With a span of 225 feet it was, until recently, Europe’s largest unsupported domed roof and earned the building its Grade II listing.
2007 Annual meat sales at Smithfield total £750 million.
Keevil & Best was founded by Job Keevil in 1850. Two years later, his brother opened Peter Keevil & Sons and, in 1872, their younger brother Clement formed Keevil & Weston – although the business he bought had first traded from the old Newgate Market in 1794.
The companies were merged in 1908 to become Keevil and Keevil.
In 1946 Keevils became part of Fitch Lovell, a large Smithfield supply group, although the company remained controlled by the Keevil family until 1970.
In 1991 Keevils was bought by George Abrahams, a Smithfield trader who incorporated it into his group, which specialises in importing from across the world.
Keevil and Keevil now enjoys just as good a reputation for sourcing the more unusual, gourmet cuts of meat, as it does for purveying more locally sourced meat, poultry and game of the highest quality.
