Have your street markets changed?
I know ours have.
Of course, most things change over time and street markets are no exception.
I grew up in Hoxton, a part of London’s East End. My walk to school took me from the start of Hoxton Street to the end of it. This walk took me through Hoxton’s Street market.
Although walking through the market on weekdays was entertaining, the best time to visit was Saturday. Saturday was the day most people did their shopping. That was the day the market really came alive.
Walking through the market on Saturdays, your ears would be full of the shouts of costermongers advertising their goods or haggling with their customers with good-hearted banter. Your eyes would struggle to take in all the colours of the products on sale, fruit, vegetables and fish, broken biscuits and second-hand books, while at the same time you would be trying to avoid colliding with your fellow shoppers.
Towards the end of the day, the air would be filled with various smells rising from leftover fruit, veg and fish dumped at the kerbside. This refuse would be collected by the council’s dust carts later in the evening.
I now live in a small Hertfordshire village 20 miles north of London, and a recent visit to a local small town’s market made me realise how street markets have changed over the years.
In the London market, the stalls were lined up at the kerbside. In this market, the stalls are spread out in a pedestrianised area, and the shoppers are free to wander among them. Although there are still fruit and vegetable stalls providing the bright colours, most of the colour comes from the clothes on display. These clothes are not sold from stalls, but from racks, each carrying brightly coloured t-shirts, skirts, shirts and dresses. It seems fashion and not food are the mainstays of modern-day street markets.
The smells of this modern market differed from the one of my past. Fruit and vegetable waste was no longer dumped in the streets to rot, and I noticed wet fish was being sold from the back of a small refrigerated van. The aroma of this market is of freshly ground coffee coming from the Costa Coffee shop.
However, the main thing I noticed was the noise, or rather, the lack of noise. There was only one costermonger who was vocally selling his produce. The rest of them seemed content to stand back and hope the customers would come to them.
Perhaps I am looking back through rose-tinted glasses at the street markets of the past. I appreciate health and safety hygiene rules have made buying our food safer, and this can only be a good thing.
Perhaps a more sedate market without shouting vendors is also a good thing. But I feel whatever we have gained from hygiene rules and noise reduction; we have also lost something of the old street market’s character.
More from me.
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