Tollinton Market in Lahore has great historical significance, but is suffering from official neglect

Tollinton Market in Lahore has a great historical and cultural background. Originally there was no particular name given to the structure, save for its exhibition hall. It was after a long time that it was given a proper name, Tollinton Market, after one of the government of Punjab’s officials, Sir H.P. Tollinton.

The old Tollinton Market used to be situated on one side of Shahra-i-Quaid-i-Azam, behind the famous museum, facing Anarkali Bazar. Its two sides faced two different roads.

The construction date of the old Tollinton Market building is not known. Some facts reveal that it was not actually made for the purpose which it serves today. The fact that in the past it was ignored badly and treated callously disappoints many. The building is a typical colonial structure. Most of the historical events confirm its use in the colonial period and afterwards.

In the 19th century the world witnessed some revolutionary changes. People started sharing local products with the rest of the world. Different kinds of exhibitions were also being held. This gave birth to the famous Industrial Revolution throughout Europe and America.

Back then, the subcontinent was ruled by the British. Whatever the British thought of in those days would be implemented in the area they’d occupied. So surveys were conducted for selecting the site for holding exhibitions. The site selected originally must have been part of the garden surrounding the Wazir Khan Pavilion, which was later made into the Punjab Public Library. It was on these large gardens where Ranjeet Singh camped when he came to capture Lahore 200 years ago. Subsequently many important buildings were constructed. A good example of such buildings is the Telegraph Office that used to display a marble plaque which proved that we had a telegraph system in place as early as in 1858. The sad part is that some years back the office was demolished.

In 1861, plans were being made to hold an industrial exhibition in Punjab at Lahore. In 1863 Mr Bains, resident engineer of the Punjab Railways, prepared the design for the building where exhibitions would be held. The first Punjab exhibition was inaugurated on January 20, 1864, by the then governor Sir Robert Montgomery.

The exhibition went on for some years but then the building was considered a perfect place for an art school. As a result, a school was founded in 1876 while the main pavilion continued to serve as a museum till 1894.

In 1887, it was decided that the building should be converted into a fruit and vegetable market for the elite of the town. This reveals that the area was liked by the British who wanted to develop their own community in the region having all the facilities like offices and small shops. The revised plans were submitted on July 25, 1895 and were approved by Rai Bahadur Gangaram (executive engineer). In 1911, a beef market was constructed here and in 1920 repair work was done. Another term of repair work was undertaken in 1937.

In 1920 the building was thoroughly repaired and the projecting entrances along the northern side, i.e. parallel to the Mall Road, were demolished to facilitate the service lane. The building suffered a callous blow just in the name of serving the public.

Afterwards, Tollinton became a proper market. Seafood, mutton, beef, vegetables, fruits, canned food and groceries could be bought from here. It was the beginning of the market but the end of the original form of the building.

According to the Lahore Conservation Society, “With a powerful sense of history, academic atmosphere, low density and large trees the precinct of Tollinton Market captures that special flavour of urbanism that is identified with Lahore. Conservation of the quality and character of spaces is not limited to preserving buildings of historical or architectural value but includes the control of land use, building densities and heights, nature of traffic. As such the development of multi-storey car park and a high use of commercial buildings on the site of Tollinton Market will prove to be a thin end of the wedge that will end up destroying everything we hold of value not only in this particular precinct but in the city of Lahore as a whole.”

Then the emotional aspect of the situation cannot be ignored either. As Sir Pran Neville an old resident of Lahore, says, “Being emotionally attached to my beloved Lahore, I am deeply disturbed to learn about the present plan to demolish the Tollinton Market Building, the historic and the prominent landmark of Lahore which housed the first Punjab Exhibition in 1864. No other city can boast a more stirring and cheered history than Lahore, the gate way to the subcontinent. It will indeed be a great pity to demolish this glorious structure built by British rulers but with the labor of nameless artisans and workers of Lahore.

We should make a fervent appeal to the authorities to preserve this landmark at all costs. I have seen how other nations take pride in their national heritage and with painstaking efforts struggle to re-build their historic structures destroyed by nature or by war. The polish people worked for decades to rebuild the old town of Warsaw completely destroyed during the last war. They had to refer the old photographs of the senior citizens.”