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| Spitalfields Market @www.ravishlondon.com The first time I saw Spitalfields Market, in 1996, I was amazed. It was a strange mix of stalls for political protest groups, ‘ethnic’ food as I thought of it in those days, organic food, second hand clothes and bric-a-brac. I also seem to remember it having five-a-side football pitches underneath its roof too! In those days you could quite easily end up walking away from the market with a handful of leaflets for better pensions, three samosas, five cooking apples one riddled with a maggot, a Rubik’s cube on key ring, a Casio watch from the 1980s – with yourself adoring a French Duke’s red velveteen overcoat from the seventeenth century; with a copy of Adbusters poking out the top pocket. Since I last visited the market, the City of London has demolished two-thirds of the site and gotten Norman Foster to build a set of office blocks in its place. Nice. Many stall holders were told in 2003 that they would be loosing their pitch. According to the BBC, market manager Eric Graham said, ‘the reduction in size has weeded out stalls which duplicated products’. What a lot of post-hoc self-justificatory nonsense. Has Graham never heard of the quaint idea that ‘competition is good for the consumer’? Building work is still going on and for the few days that the market is open it is a pale reminder of its former self. The market was built in the seventeenth century following the Great Fire of London. A key figure in its development was Robert Homer, who started off life working as the market porter, and went on to buy it in 1875. On purchasing the market, Homer rebuilt it and consolidated its business by stopping all surrounding trade or making it subject to his market fees. In 1999 a Roman burial site was found underneath Spitalfields Market. One author described the Market like so, at the turn of the eighteenth century: 'The hours I wished to spend in Shoreditch were from half-past ten to one. Hailing a hansom, I drove to Baker Street Station, and took a ticket to Aldgate. On my arrival there, I strolled leisurely up Commercial Street by Spitalfields Market, crossing the streets that intersect the main thoroughfare. Here on this Sunday morning every kind of marketing, huckstering, and bargaining was going briskly on. The pavement was crowded, and the roadway almost impassable. I saw an endless array of costers’ barrows, loaded with meat, fish, vegetables, and other articles of food. Jews and Jewesses, in charge of truck-loads of old clothes, boots, hats, and other wearing apparel, swore themselves hoarse in praise of their wares. The din was awful, and the stench sickening.' |
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