LETTER FROM LONDON
Real estate developers' drive, the emergence of supermarkets on the outskirts, changing consumer habits: Just like the markets that were in Les Halles left Paris for Rungis [Paris region] one after the other in 1969, they have been driven out of central London. The Covent Garden market, specializing in fruit, vegetables and flowers, closed in 1974. Billingsgate, the world's largest fish market in the 19th century, was moved to the new financial district of Canary Wharf in 1982. The Spitalfields market, around which settled Huguenots fleeing France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Irish people fleeing poverty and Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia, was relocated to Leyton, north of the capital.
These places teeming with life and smells have been replaced by international shopping malls, temples to consumerism and tourist magnets, with trendy cafés and rows of food trucks. Parts of medieval, Georgian and Victorian London have disappeared too. Until now, only one market has resisted this city center sanitization: Smithfield Market, specializing in meat, wholesale and retail, and located in the heart of the City, near St. Paul's Cathedral and the enormous Barbican cultural center. But not for long: on November 26, the City of London Corporation, the local authority administering the square mile, announced that it was withdrawing its centuries-long support for the country's oldest meat market, which has been in continuous operation for 850 years.
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