In around four years’ time, possibly a little longer, the last carcasses will be loaded off refrigerated trucks, as they always are, shortly before midnight. Seven hours later, as rueful traders head off for their traditional dawn pint of Guinness one final time, Smithfield Market will close its doors for good. A daily London ritual keeping the capital supplied with beef, pork, poultry and lamb since the 10th century will be no more.
The City of London Corporation has been itching to move Smithfield’s traders on — just as drovers once herded cattle down the “hollow way” of north London — for some years. As long ago as 2018, the corporation snapped up the former Barking Reach power station site armed with plans to turn it into an integrated modern food market, not just for Smithfield, but for Billingsgate and Spitalfields too.
