from Hacker News

London's 850-year-old food markets to close

by kepler471 on 11/27/24, 9:36 PM with 278 comments

• by alexwasserman on 11/27/24, 11:20 PM

  Statement from the City of London Corporation which is closing them down:

  > Chris Hayward, policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, said the > decision represented a "positive new chapter" for the markets as it "empowers > traders to build a sustainable future in premises that align with their > long-term business goals".

  This is a great statement. Like firing people to free them up to find jobs that better align with their desire for employment.

• by walterbell on 11/27/24, 10:32 PM

  Need a City quant PhD to invent a mathematical analog of Black-Scholes [1] for pricing and trading the irreplaceable value of culturally significant physical spaces to future generations. Then City-like [2] institutions can compete financially for ongoing preservation rights, rather than a one-time chop shop auction.

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model

  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London

• by cjs_ac on 11/27/24, 10:25 PM

  > The decision to close the markets and offer traders compensation was made by the Corporation's Court of Common Council.

  > The Corporation will now have to file a Private Bill in Parliament as it seeks to absolve itself of the legal responsibility of running the markets.

  The Corporation in this case is the Corporation of the City of London, which is the local government authority for the City of London, which is only the part of London that is within the walls of Roman Londinium. The Parliamentary Bill may very well not pass, in which case the Corporation may be in something of a pickle.

• by vr46 on 11/27/24, 10:55 PM

  Super sad, have spent a long of time in the area from riding right through the middle of it and parking my motorbike under it, to wolfing Turkish lunches and drinking in the pubs (not on the same day, drink-driving mavens). It is a bit of anomaly in the modern London, hard to get to and surrounded by roads that aren’t really fit for purpose anymore, but it’s these incongruous spots that make things interesting. I remember the butcher on the main Farringdon Road just near the Charterhouse St junction, who was somewhat of a character, scoffing at my suggestion that he would even consider buying meat from Smithfield - literally around the corner - which confused and amused me at the same time.

  I note the haughty remarks of other commenters who are neither familiar with the area or the ability to read, and suggest they pay a virtual visit to the spots in question

• by DrBazza on 11/28/24, 7:58 PM

  The Corporation of London own the land Billingsgate is on. They've been looking to redevelop this for over a decade since the land's value is now magnitudes more than when it was built because of Canary Wharf and the new Canary Wharf Crossrail station.

  It's prime real estate land, possibly the best plot in London right now. And so is Smithfield, or at least the land that Museum of London is on, and they're moving to Smithfield. For a while I expect.

  The whole thing is just short term profiteering over tradition and a rich history. Some things need preserving.

• by teractiveodular on 11/28/24, 12:23 AM

  It's interesting to see how cities are handling the increasing bifurcation of wholesale and retail markets.

  In Sydney, the current Fish Market is a grotty assemblage of small warehouses in what's now a prime waterfront location of the city that has become an unlikely tourist attraction, but still serves the wholesale market. They're building a new one right next to it that looks far nicer, leaves tourists much less at risk of getting impaled by a speeding forklift, and will keep the wholesalers around for at least some time since they've been promised fixed rents for the next X years: https://newsydneyfishmarket.insw.com/insw/new-sydney-fish-ma...

  All other markets, though, have been shipped off to a massive complex in the industrial suburbs, designed for wholesalers with easy truck access, and with the arguable exception of Paddy's Markets (which mostly sells junk to tourists) there's not a single proper consumer retail market in the entire city. Meanwhile, over in Melbourne, there's a whole slew of them (Queen Vic, Prahran, Footscray etc) that all appear to be thriving.

• by johnzim on 11/27/24, 11:03 PM

  What a shame. On a few occasions my wife and I woke up at ridiculous o'clock and made our way down to Billingsgate market on the underground. We'd come back with fish and a big salmon in a black bin-bag, which I'd do a progressively less horrific job of filleting each time.

  Our reward would be a bacon/sausage and egg butty and a stiff cup of builder's tea.

  Good times

• by hi_hi on 11/27/24, 10:25 PM

  This makes me deeply sad. I use to live near to the market on St Johns Street, which is a direct route to the Smithfield. There was once a burst water main that serviced a nearby hospital that caused St Johns Street to be closed down as the flood uncovered bones which needed to be excavated and investigated. They eventually were identified as cattle bones which were a few hundred years old, from when the road was nothing but dirt and would have hundreds of animals pass along it on the way to the market for sale and slaughter.

  It's also a beautiful and historic building and site.

  I'm not sure what led to the decision to close it, but I can only assume it was for commercial interests of some form, and will eventually be turned into souless apartments, and the surrounding businesses, bars, pubs and nightclubs will also fall into decline.

• by Animats on 11/29/24, 7:13 AM

  It took this long?

  Paris closed Les Halles in 1973.[1]

  New York's Fulton Fish Market moved in 2005.[2]

  A wholesale food market is a transportation hub. It needs good road access. If you can't easily get semitrailer trucks to it, it's in the wrong place. At one time Smithfield was served by underground freight rail, but that shut down long ago. Smithfield has a setup where maybe eight semis can parallel park on the street and back up to loading docks. Hunts Point Market in New York has space for over a thousand.

  It's the end of an era, though. One of the last of the big public markets.

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Halles

  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_Fish_Market

• by tim333 on 11/28/24, 5:41 PM

  The NYT has a much more detailed article on this. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/world/europe/london-smith... or https://archive.ph/dz5zY

  Including that William (Braveheart) Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered there in 1305.

• by renewiltord on 11/28/24, 6:06 PM

  Entertaining. Everyone wants more housing but no one wants to give up anything for more housing. I love it! Haha, imagine making one's bed a certain way, lying in it, then complaining they didn't like it and then making it the same way the next night. Pure magic.

  In America, we do this by running our ports artisanally. Residents of this nation pay billions for the privilege of 50,000 manually handling containers in the old way: refined, traditional and not by soulless automation. England would do well to learn from our dedication to the past.

• by jahewson on 11/28/24, 12:35 AM

  > Work has already begun on turning this site into a new cultural and commercial hub, which includes the new London Museum.

  Yes, come to the museum to learn about all this culture we used to have, such as an awesome market.

• by Daub on 11/27/24, 11:29 PM

  What the betting that they will turn in to a hive of chi-chi coffe shops, gift shops and bespoke offices, like they did to Coventry Garden and borough market. Since the early 80s London has been on a death dive, with real life London being replaced by a plastic equivalent.

• by darksfall on 11/27/24, 11:21 PM

  The whole area is full of so many personal memories; having lived, worked, and partied in & around Smithfield Market.

  I live in Portugal now, but those times are so vivid. Whenever I was at the office very early, or out parting late enough, the sight of the market workers there was sobering and down to earth.

  To think of it not being there, then being replaced with something nondescript, is shameful.

  In and around is Farringdon Station, one of the original Tube stations, the bars & pubs (Ye Olde Mitre, The Hope, Fox & Anchor, Smiths of Smithfield, etc.) and clubs (including Fabric).

  I was working in the offices above the markets, for a nascent IT company, and believe me they weren't luxurious offices but it was exciting.

  Good times, and soon only memories.

• by PaulDavisThe1st on 11/28/24, 1:34 AM

  The same thing happened to Covent Garden in the 1970s - the original site was closed, a new one was opened that over time became very evidently much better suited to being a large scale wholesale fruit and vegetable market.

  Everybody and their uncle bitched and moaned about it, but I think there are few people today who would argue that London would be better off if Covent Garden was still the central produce market rather than the touristic hellhole it is today.

• by SilverBirch on 11/28/24, 9:52 PM

  I walk past/through Smithfields regularly. It's... nice? Ok it's not nice, it' uniquely London but it's just a pretty run down area in the middle of much nicer areas. But the plan was never to keep it, the plan was to knock it down and tell the people who had been working there to go work in Dagenham. So in my view this is no difference. That area of London just doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a meat market anymore, and while you can preserve the buildings you can't preserve a set of businesses that look sillier and sillier by the day. At some point you have to ask what you're actually preserving, because "Smithfields Market (rebuilt in Dagenham in 2025)" isn't really that historical.

• by paxys on 11/27/24, 10:26 PM

  > The original market first traded in Lower Thames Street in the City in 1327, before moving to its current site in Poplar, east London, in 1982.

  So the "850 year old" food market is actually a 42 year old market, and will likely continue to operate from a different location as it has done many times in the past.

• by zeristor on 11/28/24, 1:17 AM

  Farringdon station happens to be where the Thameslink line from North to South London, intersects with the East to West Elizabeth line.

  As the Elizabeth Line was being finished I realised that the whole area around there is going to change hugely.

  Mind you if that’s the case the station would need to be rebuilt.

  The article discusses converting the market to a social space to make the most of the new Museum of London.

  Am I missing something, I would have thought the new Museum of London would open as the Old one closed, not a year or so later.

  And how on Earth is a new market in Dagenham spec’d as costing a large fraction of a billion quid?

• by ToucanLoucan on 11/27/24, 10:42 PM

  > "empowers traders to build a sustainable future in premises that align with their long-term business goals"

  After referencing my corporatese translation book, I believe this means "Traders can get fucked we have money to make."

• by helsinkiandrew on 11/28/24, 8:25 PM

  It’s sad for the traders being evicted but the fact is that these markets have been dwindling in importance for decades. Restaurants and shops don’t get up before dawn to go to market to see what’s fresh, they order from wholesalers online or direct from the farms and get food delivered (often with fresh veg from the same supplier)

  Smithfield’s in particular is better as a new home for the London museum and probably more office/retail buildings than a poorly located commercial meat market

• by samaltmanfried on 11/28/24, 9:43 PM

  I just searched for modern images of Smithfield market, and what on earth is that ghastly awning they've bolted onto that beautiful historic (presumably Victorian) facade?

  For example: https://dm1igrl0afsra.cloudfront.net/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/...

• by mensetmanusman on 11/28/24, 1:23 AM

  When money is all that matters, it makes sense (to first order) to push out everything that seems to lose money and is purely cultural.

  This is the machine winning.

  To second order(s) and above, erasing culture reduces the desire of folks to live and prosper in the first place.

• by seanhunter on 11/29/24, 8:26 AM

  This is a bit misleading about Billingsgate fish market. They shut the real Billingsgate fish market next to London bridge a long time ago and moved it to canary wharf. The fact is London has changed a lot in 850 years and it probably doesn’t really make that much sense to have a wholesale meat market right in Farringdon any more, or even at all, when wholesale buyers can just order what they need direct from suppliers and have it shipped directly to them rather than gathering flies at an open market for a few hours somewhere in the middle because TRADITION.

• by kibwen on 11/28/24, 12:21 AM

  If you're in Boston, the open-air Haymarket operates downtown on Fridays and Saturdays, and more-or-less has been doing so continuously for 200+ years now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_(Boston) Even if you're not near downtown, the prices make it worth the trip (bring cash and bags).

• by HenryBemis on 11/28/24, 8:45 PM

  "it's all about the money now"

  Newsflash: It's always been about the money. I first went to Canary Wharf in 1995, a friend bought a small house there and it was a shitty place. I visited him again in 2001 and the place had changed "a lot". I ended up living in the same area for a few years around 2017, and CW has nothing from 'that' time. Back then you could buy land/a house at a (considering today's prices) 'cheap'. Now every square meter is worth plenty of Latinum. So yeah, this part (market) could be 'repurposed for luxury offices, luxury homes, etc and whoever owns it can have a x20 return, so why not..?

• by ofou on 11/28/24, 10:07 PM

  From the City of London wiki:

  In December 2012, following criticism that it was insufficiently transparent about its finances, the City of London Corporation revealed that its "City's Cash" account – an endowment fund built up over the past 800 years that it says is used "for the benefit of London as a whole"[51] – holds more than £1.3bn. As of March 2016, it had net assets of £2.3bn.[52] The fund collects money made from the corporation's property and investment earnings.[53]

• by slimebot80 on 11/28/24, 1:14 AM

  Still time to prevent this. Fingers crossed.

• by Midnight1938 on 11/28/24, 5:26 AM

  Slightly amusing how a lot of stuff like this thats happening to uk is things they have done to others in the past

• by moomin on 11/28/24, 12:45 AM

  Smithfield features quite heavily in “Great Expectations”. Dickens hated the place. He subscribed to a theory that a city needed good circulation, which meant that things that obstructed traffic were considered bad, and Smithfield was hugely stationary and snarked up everything around it.

  Of course, he had no concept of the circulation of money as being interesting and important to the “health” of a city, but most economists since Marx do.

• by Joaomcabrita on 11/28/24, 8:14 PM

  Sad. Why not revamp, renew and reinvent rather than close it down.

  Loads of examples of markets turned to food and culture markets both in London and other places.. Lisbon, Stockholm, etc.. and they are thriving!

• by mgaunard on 11/28/24, 10:04 PM

  What's the problem with Billingsgate? It's already outside the center in dodgy tower hamlets.

  And it's depended on by all the fine food fish restaurants, including all the sushi ones.

• by interludead on 11/29/24, 8:10 AM

  It’s worrying how this could ripple through small businesses and fishmongers who rely on these markets. Where’s the sustainable alternative for them?

• by gadders on 11/28/24, 3:20 PM

  I've heard there is a cafe in Billingsgate you can go to first thing in the morning and get a scallop and bacon roll for £8. I need to try it soon.

• by stuaxo on 11/29/24, 12:10 PM

  This needs a change in legislation to get through, I'm not sure why nobody has opened a petition to parliament re: this.

• by petesergeant on 11/27/24, 10:41 PM

  > "It means there’s no fish market for London, which would mean the populace of London would have to resort to using local fishmongers"

  I mean, or Tesco?

• by ngcazz on 11/28/24, 12:12 AM

  Guess I better get cross out my "buy fresh meat from Smithfield at 6am" item from my bucket list soon...

• by zephod on 11/27/24, 11:39 PM

  We spent our first year as a startup hacking on laptops in the attic of Smithfields, along with a dozen other startups. No idea if Innovation Warehouse is still up there[1]. If you arrived at work early enough they'd still be hosing the blood off the tarmac from the early morning market.

  Most startups moved out to WeWork as soon as they could turn a profit. But hey, it was cheap office space in super-central London.

  [1] https://www.facebook.com/innovationwarehouselondon/

• by jl6 on 11/29/24, 7:47 AM

  So this is essentially the government ending a subsidy for small businesses?

• by DidYaWipe on 11/28/24, 4:49 AM

  Another fascinating, vibrant part of a city's history destroyed and replaced with generic glossy bullshit.

• by sandworm101 on 11/27/24, 11:10 PM

  An old tradition is to be replaced with the current hot trend: selling condos as investment assets. But land speculation and development predates everything in london.

• by kragen on 11/28/24, 7:25 PM

  Are these Smithfield and Billingsgate wet markets the last wet markets to close in the wake of the covid pandemic?

• by lambdaone on 11/28/24, 3:27 PM

  A tragic and short-sighted act of cultural vandalism for short-term profit. In other words, business as usual.

• by nothercastle on 11/27/24, 10:59 PM

  Real estate developer looking to build build flats for Chinese and Russian investors. Gotta love the grift

• by walthamstow on 11/28/24, 7:35 AM

  If this market was in Stoke or Hull there would be a national outcry. Farage would be all over it like a rash.

• by Tade0 on 11/28/24, 6:34 AM

  This is why I'm distrustful towards any initiatives aiming to make a city "more liveable for humans".

  First they entice you with a vision of a place where everything is within walking distance, then they do this.