In 1869 Baroness Burdett-Coutts paid for the building of the great Columbia Market (for fish) between Hackney and Bethnal Green Roads on the site of Nova Scotia Gardens, a squalid area of tenements and hovels and dust heaps. The cost of building the market was estimated at 200,000. It was a philanthropic enterprise to make a clearance of the slum dwellings which clustered so thickly in the area but also to help the local people to have supplies of cheap fresh produce. Lack of support from w