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.
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.
"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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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).
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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'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?
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.
> 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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