We all know of the big, commercial, London markets:
Smithfield, Billingsgate, Nine Elms / Covent Garden for meat, fish and flowers.
Then there are the very popular: Portobello Road and
Petticoat Lane markets along with general and specialist markets such as Chapel
Market and Leather Lane and many others.
One that I knew quite well is called Leadenhall Market, I
have not been there for some years, but nowadays it is full of fashion shops,
cafes, bars and is buzzing with tourists and City workers alike.
When I knew it first in the early 1970s, it was buzzing
then but it was completely different.
Leadenhall Market has been in existence since the Middle
Ages and, before the City of London (the Square Mile) became a financial centre,
it was a residential and working district.
Samuel Pepys was one famous resident for a while and his wife’s memorial
is in St Olave’s Church nearby. Many of
those living in the City used Leadenhall Market to buy much of their food,
although this started to dwindle once the population declined as more and more financial
companies took over land and premises to establish their offices and
headquarters.
One benefit that big organisations gave for their
employees was a staff restaurant so they could have a mid-day meal at work; but
the directors and very senior managers were not going to mix with the employees
to enjoy their lunches. Oh
no. What many of these companies did was
set up a kitchen and facilities close to the Board Room and employ one or two
ladies who had graduated from one of the top Catering Colleges to cook for the
Directors. The contract for the cooks
was to provide a two or three course lunch, five days a week, for all of the
Directors. No small order!
Where to get provisions and supplies on a daily
basis? There you have it: Leadenhall
Market was right there and with most of the right shops already there and
trading. There were butchers (two at
least that I recall and vividly remember seeing enormous turkeys hanging
outside their shops at Christmas), a fishmonger, fruit and vegetable shops,
bakers, a very popular cheese shop amongst others. All that the City cooks might need (other
shops were there as well, such as one ladies’ fashion boutique that Mrs A
frequented, even just popping in for a look around sometimes, and an electric
goods retailer with a wide range of Christmas lights in season).
Just outside Leadenhall Market, there was a spacious tobacconist
on the corner of Cornhill and Gracechurch Street offering a wide selection of
quality cigars (to celebrate successful deals) and wine merchants dotted here
and there around the City. I used to get
my sandwiches from a tiny shop in Bulls Head Passage, where everything was
freshly prepared and served in brown paper bags (no plastic), there was always
a long queue and you had to squeeze your way inside, but the quality was second
to none. In Ship Tavern Passage there
was an Italian café open from breakfast time to mid-evening where we often had
snacks before going in for Dramatic Society rehearsals.
I remember a television profile of one of these City
cooks who shopped for supplies for her Directors’ lunches in Leadenhall Market. They interviewed one of the Directors of the
company she worked for after lunch one day.
He commented that the meal was “… pretty good, but everyone knows a
Hot-pot is really made with mutton …” Well you cannot win them all.
Eventually, things had to change. In this case, along came a number of
high-volume catering companies which bid for contracts to provide meals, snacks
and refreshments for staff and senior management of the City businesses. Usually undercutting the in-house teams
because they could provide economies of scale.
Slowly, the customer base for the provisions suppliers in Leadenhall
Market dwindled away and the Market changed its focus as more cafes and retail
outlets took up residence to cater for the local clientele. The Market – reinvigorated – moved on.
