One of London’s special and often reinvigorated markets.

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.

This is my subjective view of Leadenhall Market and this area of the City as I have seen it - and is only a blip in its long history; maybe it is up to somebody else to write the authoritative story – it should be an interesting read.