Markets in markets

How London's street markets came to prosper

Written by Andrew Bailie for the Greater London Project.

Brixton Market is for sale, again, reopening a debate about the role of markets in feeding our city. Markets are prototypical public spaces, essential for social and economic life throughout London. There is an outpouring of concern whenever important, historic markets are threatened with redevelopment. However, the sector has always been in flux. Individual markets may be under pressure, but the system is resilient and will continue bringing people and food together for years to come. 

From a bird's eye view, London is a tangled, illogical mess. It only makes sense from a chicken’s eye view. Walk along Poultry and head to Cornhill, the site of an ancient corn market. You are tracking the route of chickens being driven to market hundreds of years ago. Turn onto Cheapside or Eastcheap - bastardisations of ceap, the old English word for barter. Finish in Leadenhall Market, clambering into the basement of a barbershop. Here you can see the remains of the Roman Forum, built in 100 AD. London was a marketplace before it was a city. 

Since the Romans left, London’s leaders have had mixed attitudes to markets. On one hand, they conducted escalating amounts of informal, untaxed trade. Between 1851 and 1900, the number of street markets trebled (from 37 to 112). Whilst authorities continued to target unlicensed street vendors, they grudgingly noted their role in distributing affordable food to a surging population. 

“if the street markets were abolished to-day, the poor would certainly suffer” (LSE, 1932: 292)

Modern London eats 20 billion calories per day. Markets remain particularly important for low-income residents. You can access a market without spending anything, or find high-quality, culturally-appropriate food on a budget. They provide commercial and social hearts to neighbourhoods, while acting as a testing ground for food entrepreneurs. Pizza Pilgrims began on Berwick Street market, Rosa’s Thai grew out from Brick Lane, while Smokestak spun out from Kerb street market ‘Inkerbator’.

Tesco launched in 1919 as a moderately profitable stall in Well Street Market. In the early 2010’s recession, Well Street market closed. In 2016, it triumphantly reopened in a ceremony led by Sadiq Khan and an association of traders. Now, it is dwindling again. Stalls struggle to make sales in the shadow of a Tesco Metro supermarket that operates a few steps away from where it all started.

Markets in flux

London’s food markets are supported by the publicly funded London Markets Board (LMB). Traditional street markets have been recast as social infrastructure, receiving millions of pounds of direct investment. The number of farmers markets has quadrupled since the millennium, while private street food operators are springing up across the city. Borough Market has been trading for over 1,000 years. Queens Market has been protected from demolition by decades of community campaigning. On the surface, our markets seem like a uniquely resilient urban phenomena.

But the truth is, most markets disappear before you have had the chance to visit them. Like other retail businesses, they disproportionately fail in the first few years of operation. Unlike other retail businesses, they rely on vendors and customers meeting in the same place, at the same time. This makes them vulnerable to a death spiral. After a few slow days, vendors will seek new opportunities to sell their food. The loss of vendors makes the market less attractive to customers, subsequently making it a less attractive opportunity for vendors and so on. When markets disappear, they do so quietly. Academics and policy makers can only focus on the markets that survive long enough to be studied. Our oldest markets are oddities. To support future markets, we need to understand the factors which make a death spiral more likely. 

In 2022, I used guidebooks and public archives to map 94 markets, which had disappeared between 2006 and 2022. Over half of these are still erroneously displayed on the London Market Board’s map. The main finding was that London’s markets fail frequently. The median lifespan of failed markets was 1.4 years: 80% of failed markets lived less than 4 years of trading, while 1-in-4 failed in their first year. The spatial distribution of failed markets differs from those which have continued trading. 

A map of London’s markets which ceased trading between 2006 and 2022. Yellow (between 2006 and 2015), orange (between 2015 and 2019), red (between 2019 and 2022). 

The good news is that many other markets are thriving. There were 168 trading when I completed the research (October 2022). Since then, many will have begun their death spiral and some will have ceased trading entirely. In other locations, new markets will pop up and start weaving together vendors, customers and food in new ways. Even as London changes, it still needs to feed itself – and the data show that markets retain an important role in our shared urban life.

A map of London’s markets which were operating in October 2022.

When we focus on old markets, it is natural to view the closure of a market as a loss of heritage - a tragedy, like misplacing Stonehenge. But if we accept that the market system has always been in flux, we can accept that less popular, less accessible markets will unravel and new ones will form. The overall trend is that the number of markets is growing. They currently employ around 3% of all retail workers in the capital.

Knot from here

London should think about its markets as a system of knots, tying together the trajectories of food and people, selling and buying, social and economic interactions. Borough market has become a Gordian Knot- so large and complex that it could only be untied through a dramatic severing action. Elephant and Castle is still reeling from the demolition of its market, which drew Latin American traders and customers from every corner of the city. When I visit the new markets springing up (e.g. East Finchley) I notice stalls who previously traded at markets which died. Threads snap and new knots can be tied elsewhere. 

Some knots are self-tightening. Under pressure, they inspire community activism and political campaigns, which make the market harder to unpick. Last time Brixton Market was purchased and scheduled for redevelopment, campaigners articulated its importance to the Afro-Caribbean Londoners who made homes after post-war migration. Whoever buys the site now, will buy it with Grade 2 listing and a community who are committed to buying and selling food there. 

Other markets are slipknots, designed to unravel. A pop-up can add some colour and economic activity to a meanwhile space, while exploiting the cheap rents that accompany short lease periods. Mercato Metropolitano has emerged as a key player in London’s food market sector, while occupying the site of a former paper factory, earmarked for over 500 new homes. 

As London’s streetscape changes, markets will shape these changes and keep food flowing. We live on streets shaped by the legacy of long-dead markets, and we rely on the survivors. But we should never forget that London’s market system has always evolved alongside the city; a cycle of failures and launches, outpacing academic research and official mapmaking. London’s governments shouldn’t cling to outdated maps – the best markets are tied into urban change, rising to the needs of the people who use them. London was a market before it was a city. Now it is a city where many markets are dying and many more are being created – a market of markets, as it always has been. Long may it continue.