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.
Yes. Canary Wharf is being transformed from a purely financial district into a mixed business-residential district. They want to move noisy and smelly businesses away from the offices and apartments.
Christ, yeah - I came here to post the same quote. What kind of horrific shit does one need to go through in life to become capable of uttering that kind of horseshit with a straight face?
Maybe we shouldn’t be casting stones from the HN glass house, because literally every other startup here has a mission statement that sounds as ridiculous as this
They shouldn't but they do. Making the world a better place is not what founders have in mind. What they have in mind is "we are looking for an exit and retire young", for nearly all of them. Unfortunately those words are not something they can write in a mission statement so they must be creative.
Not just startups, this cognitive dissonance is everywhere in business and we're supposed to just swallow it. Honestly I've been a cynical prick for most of my adult life and for a while I played along with it but it just does not align with my values and keeping up the pretense is draining.
I mean uh. Come work for us / hire us, we're the best at what we do! Honest! AI!
Unrealistic goals seem to be a core tenet of capitalist realism. You see the same thing in politics: Trump is going to stop the Ukraine war in one day, Musk is going to cut 2 trillion from the US budget with efficiency improvements, etc... . A couple of years ago my company gave OKRs a go. One of the principles is that objectives should be practically impossible to reach, i.e. if you hit 100% of an objective then it wasn't ambitious enough. It's a surefire way to ramp up anxiety and stress on a team.
The C-Suite coming up with this garbage is in every industry. You notice it more with tech companies on HN because that's the industry we usually focus on
Mission statements have the main function of obscuring that. It is safe to assume that the more obfuscating a mission statement is, the most likely the business goal is to steal investors' monies while finding another fool to buy the whole operation, ideally someone from the FAANG crew.
That's the great thing with such an ambiguous statement is that they can pivot at any point without having say they are pivoting. They are in a position to do what ever it is that someone inquires
Five weeks in any major corporation outside of IT, and you will be spewing that kind of talk like a machine gun. It's mind-numbing. Avoid the suits as if they were spreaders of the plague, because their brain-rot is not much better.
I don't know which planet you live on, but London's public transit is hellish on days where it works. The fact that there seems to be industrial action every other week, that the subway is slowly heating up, and major stations are virtually always overcrowded is not something I even take into consideration. Not when the local trains have a toss-of-a-coin chance of actually showing up at all, or even in a configuration that was originally planned, and not just half of the carriages.
I unironically had better public transit in third-world countries.
Certainly not my experience of London transport. I get a combination of trains, tubes and busses most days. I also grew up in rural England so I know what shitty transport is really like.
It always amuses me when people respond with some completely unrelated personal hobby horse like this. There’s nothing at all in my comment in any way related to driving or congestion fees, not even if you squint a whole lot, and no way in which this comment ties into anything at all I said, even if I squint a whole lot.
I’m not sure the comment fields are considered by media organizations or public figures… like, at all. I remember talking to a journalist about a series they were working on, they said the feedback they’ve gotten has been overwhelmingly positive and no one had anything bad to say about it. The comments on their articles were absolutely negative and vitriolic. I don’t think anyone with a shred of influence or responsibility in western society reads them.
> I remember talking to a journalist about a series they were working on, they said the feedback they’ve gotten has been overwhelmingly positive and no one had anything bad to say about it. The comments on their articles were absolutely negative and vitriolic.
There are two quite different possible interpretations for that fact pattern.
For an article like this, the negative comments would be aimed at the people in the article, not the journalist. So the article can be a great (muckraking) article, and the comments might also be vitriolic, and everything is good if the rage is well-aimed.
the ruling comes from up-on-high the mayor of London who does have some oversight over the city of london, and the transit of traders that utilise the market.
The Mayor of London doesn't have any power over the City of London Corporation. They are completely separate authorities.
The Corporation is essentially a unitary/borough-tier local authority, overseeing the "square mile" centre of the city, and has a council of elected councilmen. It provides housing, education, social services, street cleaning, markets etc for a small area of central London, and has existed since time immemorial.
The Mayor's remit, which has only existed since the year 2000, covers the whole 600-square mile area of Greater London, and provides strategic services like transport, strategic planning, fire and rescue, and the metropolitan police.
The Mayor of London wouldn't have had any involvement in this at all.
Fun fact, the City of London is the last local authority in the UK where businesses as well residents get to vote. Businesses can appoint one voter for every five employees up to 50, and then one per 50 employees after that.
there are more business votes, but practically very few people actually use their business vote
as a business voter I went to my ward's annual meeting (wardmote), they were surprised to see a non-resident there
nearly the entire thing was about issues residents care about (late noise, cycle paths, petty crime, etc)
that and their amazing new plans for billingsgate/smithfield
the other are a couple of other things to remember about City ward lists:
1. employers have no involvement other than picking their voters -- it's up to the individuals
2. due to the allocation rules: micro-businesses have most of the votes, so small food vendors have significantly more votes than all the large businesses
I think a lot of people who don't know much about London are surprised that the City of London is quite small and not what people generally mean when they say "London".
The reality is that almost no one makes any good money in the food industry. For a lot of people in that industry, if they tried to find jobs that better aligned with their skills (except in food), they'd likely be better off. A lot of people take jobs in terrible places and get complacent, maybe far too complacent.
A healthy economy is one where money, people, skills, and intellectual property has high velocity, meaning people quickly reorient their productive capacity to where it's most useful.
Well, this would all be true if the UK wasn't going through a lost generation economically. Serves them right for Brexit!
Unfortunately nobody has solved the pesky problem that people need to eat at least once a day, so somebody has to work in the food industry. Getting rid of these central markets means smaller markets spread all over the country will do the same work, but likely making the food more expensive and the supply less reliable.
> A healthy economy is one where money, people, skills, and intellectual property has high velocity, meaning people quickly reorient their productive capacity to where it's most useful.
Everyone is an interchangeable cog!
> Serves them right for Brexit!
Brexit wasn’t a unanimous vote. There are people suffering under the Brexit decision that couldn’t vote at the time.
Democracy is a system of government. It asks people to vote on important decisions (like brexit) and to choose leaders to make day-to-day decisions on their behalf.
It is, of course, the system favored in the West and evident touted as the "best system".
Being 'best' of course does not necessarily make it good. Large groups of people are easily swayed based on fear, anger, perception, rhetoric and so on. The implications of each policy are seldom evaluated in the cold light of day.
So yes, the British voted for brexit- that is democracy in action. Majority Rules - so whining about being in the minority is irrelevant - the system is literally based on "majority rules".
Same thing in the US now. A president has been elected where he has specific points of action. The majority voted for those points of action. The people have spoken. Those policies are not secret. They have been publically explained to anyone who cared to listen.
It's not necessary to blame foreign agents. The decision lay with the electorate, and the electorate have spoken. It is the very core of democracy that those votes be respected and acted on. Uou want to leave Europe? Fine. Is it monumentally stupid? Absolutely. But democracy does not require "good" decisions, only popular ones.
And before the US folk get smug, tarrifs are coming to drive up prices. That is quite literally what the people have voted for. I have no doubt this will reinvigorate the local manufacturing industry. The next VC target will be steel.
Your argument only works when politicians don't lie, when they're sincere, when people are not getting deceived. It is unreasonable to ask of people of low and moderate intelligence who lack time cause overburdened with work to do proper research in a world of fake news (read: propaganda) and micro targeting. Honestly, I find it victim blaming.
For example, Trump distanced himself from Project 2025. Now the people he has selected for his government are from Heritage Foundation and all that.
Furthermore, he incited a coup yet still is going to sit on a throne. That is not democracy in my book.
I'm merely saying how democracy works. If democracy fails because the people who have the voting power are too unintelligent (your words, not mine) then that's a flaw in the political system.
Personally I think people are plenty intelligent. (OK, there are a few morons, and they get good TV time, but for the most part people are smart enough.)
Blaming the electorate is not victim blaming. Since they hold the power they can't be victims.
It is the goal, and function, of politicians to persuade the people. If the people choose to follow one source of media, that is up to them.
Trumps lies are easily debunked to anyone who cares. Lots of voters don't care that he lies. Lots of voters believe whatever they want. Democracy, as a system of govt explicitly puts the power in these peoples hands. That's not a bug, it's the killer feature.
Trump was very clear in his goals. Tarrifs, deportation, abortion ban, IVF under threat. No support for Ukraine. 100% for Israel, pro Palestinian support suppressed. Ignore climate change. Demonize minorities. He ran on these policies, the majority voted for them, he'll do what they asked for.
Look, all systems are fine and dandy when the politicians have good intentions. Equally all systems fail when bad actors come onto the stage. But hey, democracy is the best option right?
That’s not an excuse. By construction, not voting means voting for the option with the most votes. These people should realise that they would not be in this shite had they bothered to show up.
Our horror to the capitalist economic calculus of this world does absolutly nothing to make the world less ruthlessly capitalistic. In fact, we've seen that all attempts to overthrow capitalism (i.e. communism or SJW liberal wokism) have done nothing but entrench and strengthen capitalism and indeed, strengthen its uniquely worst parts of it.
You should look into Mark Fischer as an example of someone who tried to see just how evil it is in its full glory. Look at what happened to him afterwards. That's what happens when you think about it too much.
Unironically, swim with the fish or you'll get eaten by the sharks.
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.
The reality is that these are not culturally significant institutions and most people in London don’t care. Ordinary Londoners rarely use these markets, and they mostly sell to restaurants, and require major financial support.
Not everything from the past is good. We don’t still run coal power plants in London just to get that historic smog.
They were already planning to move both markets way out of central London (to a place no-one but a local would ever go) this is just changing it to not providing a new site.
> The reality is that these are not culturally significant institutions and most people in London don’t care. Ordinary Londoners rarely use these markets, and they mostly sell to restaurants […]
Just because most Londoners don't care doesn't make them unimportant. They can provide a useful 'infrastructure' role for allowing this specific sector to run more smoothly.
There's a similar thing in Toronto, the Ontario Food Terminal, that allows various local businesses (restaurants, local grocers / veg stands, (neighbourhood) florists, etc) buy directly from producers without having to go through a middle-man:
Given that Toronto is the largest city in Canada, it allows for a somewhat convenient location for producers to sell to a large amount of buyers in a concentrated space.
> […] and require major financial support.
Running a modern society requires major financial support. The question is: what are the benefits to society of the infrastructure in question? Are the vendors not charged rent? Are the buyers perhaps not charged a membership fee? At least when it comes to OpEx do annual fees not cover expenses? The above mentioned Ontario Food Terminal is self-sufficient from fees (perhaps the government helps out every so often with CapEx?).
> The whole operation is overseen by the Ontario Food Terminal Board.. $8 million of expenses... with a revenue rate exceeding that by $1 million, the operation is profitable, self-sustaining and receives no government support or preferential treatment despite its status as an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.. Some of those that operate here are among the wealthiest families in Canada.. The thirty-year leases held by the most powerful grocers in the city are renewable in perpetuity, privileging a small number of family-owned businesses that have kept a tight hold on their terminal rights for over three generations. The business is so robust, and the leases are so sought after, that each one is estimated to be worth over a million dollars in annual economic returns.
The fact that the major grocers in Canada is an oligopoly is separate issue from the efficiency of having a market like the OTF.
I personally know someone who has a business license and goes to the OTF for stuff. Once a year my mom tags along so she can get Christmas flowers at wholesale prices (you just have to show up at 3AM for good selection):
Mostly agree, Londoners go to Borough if they're rich or the many local farmer's markets on the weekend. You'd have to admit, the not providing a new site thing is kind of shoddy though?
Borough market is for tourists. (although one of my must-eat places for all of London is there)
I've bought some of the best seafood I've ever eaten from Billingsgate. I remember picking up some fresh scallops still covered in mud that were the plumpest sweetest scallops. My mother was in awe of how fresh they were
Sadly increasingly so re Borough. Used to be great.
Have you found anything like what it was for meat and produce? Maltby is great for street food but I mean actual raw ingredients. Yes there are some great butchers but Borough was great for everything in one place.
The reality is that the restaurant food is brought by trucks from warehouses. There are special companies that specialise in providing everything that a restaurant needs.
Aside from Michelin star places chefs don't go around buying anything the whole ordering is highly automated.
There are over 80 Michelin Star places in London. Not a small number of restaurants. Not to mention hundreds more that aspire to get a star and care deeply about being Michelin-level quality.
Visiting Billingsgate will teach you that quite a few restaurant folks (and quite a few "normal people") shop there, in addition to (smaller) fish traders.
Smithfield, at least to me, always had a different vibe; more pro-to-pro/business-to-business, but also they deliver or commission to pre order there; different from Billingsgate.
Most people in London don't care because they are not English and have no connection with the thousands of years of history the city and country have. Only a third of the population has any connection at all to the London of the 1950s, never mind the 1100s. They are not stakeholders in its heritage, the explanation is as simple as that.
I don't see anything in the article claiming this will damage the efficiency of London's food supply chains; indeed I wouldn't be surprised if it improved them.
"Preserving the irreplaceable value of ..." works great as a personal motivation or a mission statement, but terribly as an explicit rule. It's the same problem as carbon offsets - if there's a formula for converting intangible values into cold hard cash, people will exploit the definition of the intangibles to make money.
> Which legal and financial instruments have defended the City of London itself from being auctioned for parts?
Currently, the Magna Carta. Clause 9, dating from 1297:
THE City of London shall have all the old Liberties and Customs which it hath been used to have. Moreover We will and grant, that all other Cities, Boroughs, Towns, and the Barons of the Five Ports, and all other Ports, shall have all their Liberties and free Customs.
This clause has never been repealed.
But there were other forms of royal charter at least as far back as the Norman conquest, and probably before.
> 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.
> the local government authority for the City of London, which is only the part of London that is within the walls of Roman Londinium
Also known as the most efficient and high volume money laundering machine ever devised by man. Do a deep dive into russian oligarch money and the City of London, from reputable journalism sources, and you won't like what you find.
I recommend the book Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson. It covers offshore tax havens and the central role played by the City in facilitating capital flight and tax avoidance. Chapter 12 is devoted entirely to the City of London Corporation.
Haven't read it for a while but I do recall the word "strange" appearing a lot.
That seems incorrect. The mayor is the mayor of Greater London which includes the City of London, although the City also has a Lord Mayor, as London boroughs have elected or ceremonial mayors. In other words, the City has its own mayor in the sense that other parts of London have their own sub-governments, although with a few differences such as policing and city status.
> The mayor is scrutinised by the London Assembly and, supported by their Mayoral Cabinet, directs the entirety of London, including the City of London (for which there is also the Lord Mayor of the City of London)
> In 1965 the county was abolished and replaced by Greater London, a two-tier administrative area governed by the Greater London Council, thirty-two London boroughs, and the City of London Corporation.
I'm not sure that much is down to the old City of London as opposed to London as a whole. Most of the property buying mentioned in those articles is in Kensington and Chelsea. Even the Guardian says City of London but when they quote the guy with quotation marks it's "40% of that money comes through London and overseas territories and crown dependencies".
British papers tend to mix up City of London as in the old city and city of London as in the general financial services including Canary Wharf etc. Bit like how 'Wall Street' doesn't always mean that exact street.
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
I worked literally around the corner from there some years ago. Watch “Slow Horses” and you’ll see all those sights, including Barbican tube stop and its pedestrian bridge, Charterhouse square benches, the brutalist towers, my work’s favorite little pub, etc.
My running route would take me through the market in the mornings, only a few hours after it had closed up. I loved the smell of meat, which others would find quite offensive.
It's a lovely area, and home to one of my favourite restaurants, St Johns.
Not only is it home to St.John's as a restaurant, it is a geographical catalyst to a whole slow-food movement based on the food-markets proximity and the usage of offal and bone marrow by the gentleman and genius, Fergus Henderson.
Bourdain was a great pal and admirer, describing him as 'the most influential chef of the last two decades'
Did you run through Buyers Walk right inside the building, or do you mean Grand Ave, the short and often slippery vehicular road that cut the building in half?
Either are cool, although I like the image of you running through the actual market like Rocky Balboa in the meat locker or something
Yeah, Grand Ave I think, it was in the afternoons or evenings mostly, so everything was well cleaned up by then. No stopping to punch a meat carcass unfortunately :)
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.
Mostly because modern cities only allow the most boring, safe things to be built. Less people would be whining if it was possible to build a thriving market like this elsewhere in the city, where it still makes economic sense. But there's probably a billion rules and therefore capital/political requirements where it's impossible. So the only contenders will be a bigco shopping market on the bottom floor of a condo building.
Open, chaotic markets with multiple small vendors is too risky (and too much fun) for modern top-down urban planners... so people see the only solution is to cling on to the dwindling past when that was still possible.
Smithfield absolutely is. There's a large (and surprisingly atmospheric) underground car park under it and the Farringdon Elizabeth Line station has an entrance right there now too. Smithfield is one of my favourite "drive into London and park without headaches" spots when Stratford's hotels are sold out.
> Welcome to Fish Market Flats, where history meets modern luxury! Nestled in the heart of the city, this iconic landmark has been reimagined into a vibrant mixed-use community that blends timeless charm with contemporary living. Once a bustling hub of maritime commerce, Fish Market Flats is now a beacon of urban sophistication, offering high-density condos designed to elevate your lifestyle.
> Picture yourself waking up to stunning city views, stepping out into a thriving community of boutique shops and artisanal eateries—all just steps from your front door. With thoughtfully designed interiors, cutting-edge amenities, and the character of a bygone era lovingly preserved, Fish Market Flats is more than a place to live—it’s a lifestyle, a legacy, and the future of urban living.
> Don’t miss your chance to be part of this extraordinary transformation. Fish Market Flats: Where History Finds Its New Home. Reserve your slice of history today!
- Isle of Dogs, London, was the main docks area, which shutdown through the 1960s and 1970s due to standard sized containers and automation.
- 1982 Billingsgate moves to Isle of Dogs. There's nothing else there. Docks are closed. Land is cheap, and the site is easily accessible from the East for sellers, and from the West for buyers (London restaurants etc.).
- Creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) in 1981 and the granting of Urban Enterprise Zone status to the Isle of Dogs in 1982, starts the conversion of the old docks into the new business zone
- From the 90s onwards CSFB, BarCap, MS, Citi, HSBC all move to Canary Wharf
- Property and land prices are now vastly higher.
- 2022ish, Crossrail opens. Land prices and property prices increase even more.
Corporation of London has long realised it's sitting on a gold mine: the land north of the North Dock is Billingsgate
Oh, Britain preserves stuff alright - they jar and pickle the past into a pastiche, while discarding the institutions and functions that they once had.
We have converted many Victorian train stations into car parks, public baths and lidos into car parks, and excellent examples of Georgian and Elizabethan architecture into car parks. Even Stonehenge is a drive-by attraction and car park, now.
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.
Yes, although it sounds like Preston has / is / will be at risk from developers that own the land and want to build apartments.
The thing about markets like this is that once they're gone, you can never get them back again. My home town, Wellington, shut down the markets at some point in the distant past and have been trying to restart them in the more recent past to little success (think a bunch of cars parked in an uncovered car park trying to sell vegetables).
Indeed. The central Sydney locality of Haymarket is that in name only. Same for Wheat Road and The Goods Line. Wholesale fresh produce has all been in Homebush / Flemington for years now, barely accessible to anyone without a semi-trailer and the willingness to purchase a truckload. Shipping also long gone from the central spots of Walsh Bay / Barangaroo / Darling Harbour, all now relegated to Container City aka Port Botany.
If anyone is looking for a good read, there's a great book called Arcadia, which revolves around this trend of traditional city food markets being supplanted by upscale hipster traps.
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.
Agreed, one of my great pleasures during COVID when I had terrible insomnia and couldn't sleep was to cycle down to Billingsgate in the morning and eat one of the fantastic bacon and scallop rolls from the cafe in the market. Definitely going to miss the place.
I had honestly made my peace with it moving to Dagenham. It makes sense for the Farringdon area, it makes sense for transport links, it even makes sense for the traders, who mostly live out that way. To close the existing markets without building a new one is cultural vandalism.
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.
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.
Billingsgate already moved back in the 80’s, to a facility with modern loading bays, road access, etc., so while what you say about Smithfield is true, it isn’t for billingsgate.
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.
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.
Probably but Covent Garden and Borough Market are pretty popular.
My friend had a pub next to Smithfield so I used to be down there a lot but the meat market is mostly slabs of meat and associated body parts, diesel trucks and closed to the public. It seemed a little out of place in gentrified modern London.
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.
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.
I read in the FT this morning that rather than the traders being told to fuck off as I earlier stated, they are being paid a handsome sum to go quietly.
Many of them will simply retire, one trader is quoted as saying. Sounds like the Costa del Sol and Canary Islands are about to get a large influx of cockney butchers.
The New Covent Garden Market itself is currently in the middle of a multi-decade redevelopment, they've slightly reduced the footprint and sold off some land for development, and the remains (still a massive area) is being _very_ slowly converted into a more modern design - sadly not really a market where you can actually go on foot to buy things, but a co-location area for lots of wholesalers to warehouse and deliver from.
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.
That's what I'm saying, if you wanted to preserve it, preserve it where it is. If you're preserving it by moving it to east london... you're not really preserving it. There are plenty of distribution centres in east london already. So it's not really a loss to give up on the Dagenham plan.
> 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.
No, this was a bit confusing. I think this may have been talking about Billingsgate, the fish market. Smithfields is a meat market, and has been at that site in one form or another for hundreds of years.
The market as an institution is 850 years old; the building that currently houses that institution is 42 years old. The market is not a place; it is the activity in which people engage in that place.
As far as I'm aware they do need an act of parliment to close it down. The one to create the market on the current site is an Act of Parliament (The Metropolitan Meat and Poultry Market Act of 1860) which should protect the site from becoming anything but a place to provide Meat & Poultry
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
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?
It also feels like a result of housing/property values being so high. When a block of flats can sell for £100m (and bring in council tax money), why keep markets or build libraries. It's sad.
Honestly, come around to our neck of the woods and explain to a generation of 20 year olds who grew up in semi-detatched houses that they'll never buy a house in their lifetime because we chose not to build anything because we'd rather honor the dead.
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.
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).
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..?
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]
£2bn actually doesn't sound that enormous for this sort of organisation. Especially since...
> Initially the Corporation had planned to move both markets as well as New Spitalfields in Leyton to a £1bn purpose-built site in Dagenham, however this was dropped earlier this month over cost concerns as the council had already spent £308m purchasing and remediating the site in Dagenham.
They were going to spend half their entire endowment on this! And, regardless of whether you have the money to spare, £1bn is an absolutely colossal amount to spend on a market (even a large and very historic one). It just makes no financial sense at all.
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.
Not that dodgy. It’s right against canary wharf. All the areas immediately around canary wharf are being redeveloped into housing/office/retail buildings, the market is currently surrounded with construction sites.
When the Tsukiji fish market was still open to unescorted tourists there were many of these pocket eateries, I ate in one that was the size of a large closet, guests sat elbow to elbow, you can't lean back without bumping into another person who has lined up behind you to claim your seat when you're done. Clam broth, raw fish, chased with a beer, all before 6AM.
I had a chat with ChatGPT earlier who said much the same thing, but I was unconvinced by any of the examples other than Marks and Spencer(s). I think Tescos just feels nicer to say?
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.
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.
Oh no, that'd be awful...but good news, I just looked into it, no China/Russia investors! It's a real estate developer working with the people to get a bunch of units built to ease a historic shortage. Huzzah!
There is no way in hell anything built there will be for normal people.
That area is on the doorstep of the City, with excellent connections, it’s like the centre of a compass transport wise.
When completed, you can bet it will be 2m+ for a shoebox sized apartment, with yearly fees that would swallow any normal persons salary.
There's a billion dollar price tag being punted around and you think the resulting development is going to be aimed at and priced to reduce a housing supply shortage? Are you by chance on the market to buy a bridge?
Go for it. Econ 100 textbook bs about supply and demand are trivially dismissed by a casual examination of housing and rental prices in the US in gentrified areas. What happens when the real world intrudes on academic platitudes is rather straightforward: pricing for everything goes up and the folks who were struggling get pushed out. Nobody who couldn't afford housing in the market before the shift is served.
I'm more than open to reading anything about that! Literally anything!
Most respectfully and deferentially, I don't think "more things available makes price goes down" is a platitude or textbook or academic thing!
I must confess, the fact this Fat Tony logic and not some theory invented in an academic textbook ivory-tower divorced-from-reality impoverished-intellectual safe haven is why I cannot provide a proof: the note about the margin was an attempt to inject some levity, via a reference to Fermat!
> I'm more than open to reading anything about that! Literally anything!
Great! Start paying attention to real estate and rental prices in areas near "mixed use" development projects and urban multi-story housing construction, literally the projects that are billed by politicians as addressing housing shortages and you'll find my point bore out pretty plainly.
> I don't think "more things available makes price goes down" is a platitude or textbook or academic thing!
It isn't in the context of bulk commodities and raw inputs where producers compete solely on volume. Housing is not a volume market and no incentives exist for developers or property owners to make it one. See also: RealPage sued for enabling market collusion in residential rental rates: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/23/feds-sue-software-c...
I hate to be rude, but, whether or not your retirement plan is going to plan has nothing to do with whether more housing makes prices go up.
I'm honestly kinda upset you didn't have anything backing up that idea. I genuinely expect better from HN, and genuinely believed that maybe I had missed something at 35, after an econ degree before promoting getting into programming. I wouldn't have given the benefit of the doubt on any other site, and certainly not if you weren't as well spoken as you are.
I can't believe you're throwing out RealPage intros after sneering at me about entry level econ.
Buddy I knew RealPage, intimately, years ago and nothing in the story has anything to say about prices always go up. In fact, the existence of the story requires the opposite
You're arguing from a point of something you read. I'm arguing from a point of a market that I'm heavily invested in and monitoring daily. Get back to me when you've got a couple mil parked in residential real estate in a market where the kinds of development projects you're trying to provide cover for have been commonplace for a decade. I'll wait. Spoiler: you're going to find that both rents and purchase price both skyrocket.
Luxury apartments do reduce the housing shortage. Cashed up boomers can move out of the nice family home they've been living in since the kids left and upgrade/downsize.
Building the high end and having people move up helps with the high cost of construction also.
I’m not going argue that that basic Econ does not indicate that this should help a bit with housing demand. The question is how much and is it really worth loosing a public institution for.
The marginal utility for the general person of a public market seems higher than that of a couple extra housing units
Is there any Russian money going to UK/London anymore? Or any that wasn't frozen/sanctioned that hasn't already left.
I know of trader who left London to work in Dubai to still take his Russian clients business, and apparently all Russian money is going there instead of London.
No Russian money, no sirree. Fortunately there's still plenty of housing designed to appeal to Russian-speaking investors holding passports from Vanuatu, Cyprus or St Kitts and Nevis and fat investment trusts in the Cayman Islands.
Sadiq Khan is a frustrator/saboteour who sets the tone. His is occupying occupying real estate that could be used by someone to preserve and grow British culture instead of hating it and destroying it.
I’ve never seen a claim like this levelled at London, famously a place increasingly losing social housing stock for luxury housing. The only thing I can think of is this is a new twist of the complaint that a lot of London’s housing is left unoccupied because it’s Russian/Saudi vacation homes or whatever.
The landlord of the meat and fish market in Birmingham has submitted a planning application to replace it with housing. I haven't seen Farage or anyone else express much interest.
This isn't the type of market you pop down to and buy your weekly shop, this is wholesale. It's largely where restaurants will go to to buy their meat for the day/week. Smithfields opens at midnight and closes at 7am. You can walk past at mid-day and it's just a fairly run-down part of london in the middle of other much nicer parts of London. This is nothing to do with walkable cities.
The connection here is that restaurants are part of the appeal of walkable cities and now their life will be made harder. Net effect will of course be an increase in prices.
You need places like these in a city because they shoulder a huge burden, namely logistics, which are particularly hard in densely populated areas.
What's more liveable and walking-distance than a market within walking distance from where you live? This has nothing to do with urbanism, this is purely capitalistic efficiency.
I'm complaining about places to go within walking distance, such as this market, being removed despite declarations from the city authorities that they're making the place more liveable.
> 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.
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