The Fox and Anchor, a cosy and historic pub that has been in London’s famous Smithfield meat market for over two centuries, is an obligatory stop whenever I visit London these days. It no longer serves beer in pewter pint pots like it did when I lived here, but getting its cuts of meat from the nearby market meant one of the best Sunday lunches in central London while sat in its snug, conspiratorial back room.
The wave of nostalgia I felt while enjoying a speciality winter beer in the Fox was rudely ínterrupted when I was told the market has closed and, with it, 800 years of tradition on a site that witnessed extraordinary moments in British history. The colourful wrought iron structure will no longer host men in white coats carrying carcasses on their shoulders, but will suffer the fate of London’s markets (Covent, Spitalfields, Borough): gentrification.
In London: The Biography, Peter Ackroyd describes London as being like a living organism that for 2,000 years has continually reinvented itself. A place “which sloughs off its old skin, or texture, in order to live again. It is a city which has the ability to dance upon its own ashes.” Dig into the London earth and you’ll discover layers of history compacted on top of each other. Nothing is sacred here.
Smithfield will become a food hall with conference and coworking spaces – because London doesn’t have enough of those – and someone will make a lot of money while the city will be less for the loss. Having lived in this area I felt a pang of sorrow, but London is not a place for sentimentality. A walk in my former neighbourhood proves the point, giant glass blocks on City Road and Old Street have fundamentally changed the area.
It’s easy to romanticize a place that’s so familiar but with which you no longer have any real connection. In the few days over New Year I went through the same sensation reacquainting myself with the area where I lived for ten years. The Hoxton area is a transition zone between the East End and the City, where two distinct cultures merge. It’s fascinating and vibrant, a beguiling mix of new and old, tradition and upheaval.
I strolled the Regent’s Canal, now crowded with houseboats, paid a visit to the Rosemary Branch and spent a few hours exploring the maze of streets between Old Street and Brick Lane. Familiar but alien these days, some things can be relied upon to be unchanged. The Beigel Bake on Brick Lane is one of them. A salt beef bagel with mustard and pickle later, I found myself in the Carpenters Arms washing it down with a pint of Young’s.
London is too big and too exhausting, a visit here needs to be strategic. Normally I’d avoid central London – Soho, Covent Garden and Westminster – it’s too crowded and touristy, but we had two exhibitions to see – Holbein at the Queen’s Gallery and Frans Hals at the National Gallery – they made the crush worthwhile. As did the best dim sum in Chinatown (Beijing Dumpling, for the record). Last time I was here, the queue was so long we gave up.
After the crowds and narrow streets of Soho and Covent Garden, escaping to the open space of the River Thames is a pleasure. We walked past the Houses of Parliament, home to Britain’s most dysfunctional government in living memory, and onto the river. Turn left and more crowds await at the London Eye, turn right and the walk to Vauxhall Bridge and Tate Britain is a pleasure.
I worked in this area for a few years but hadn’t revisited for the best part of a decade. It’s also an area that has seen a lot of change. On the opposite bank of the Thames from Tate Britain is the MI6 building, we strolled past and found our attention drawn to a bench, on it was written: In Memory of Frankie Thorax, Always Dull and Usually Violent. The second half of the inscription seems to be from Oscar Wilde, but who Frankie Thorax is remains a mystery.
Along the river, next to St. Thomas’ Hospital and opposite Parliament is a memorial to the victims of the covid pandemic, and a reminder of the gross incompetence and corruption of the Johnson government. Over the other side of the river the Gothic clock tower that is home to Big Ben gleamed in the rare winter sunlight. It has recently been restored to its former glory, but it is so shiny it looks weird.
The rest of the Palace of Westminster is also being restored, a project estimated to take 76 years and cost the tax payer￡22 billion. It could be done more cheaply and more quickly, but MPs refuse to relocate elsewhere while the work is carried out, mostly it seems because they don’t want to work somewhere less glamorous. Is there a more perfect symbol of the state of British democracy?
76 years? You must be joking. And they seriously write “76 years”?
It might be time for another Cromwell to cut a few heads?
I see yours (politicos) are possibly even worse than ours.
Maybe we should do an exchange. Send all our MPS. and cabinet members across the Channel and you send us yours?
I think it was Brecht who spoke of a Tyrant who could not stand his own people so he replaced the people for another, more compliant… I like the idea of an “Erasmus” programme calling for a complete exchange of politicos. Then we could rotate. After two years, our politicos go to Italy, yours go to Germany and so on and so forth…
Having ranted a bit, let me thank you for this stroll in London. One of the 5-6 cities I prefer in the world. (Brussels is another).
And if it’s any consolation, same happens to me in Paris.
Tot ziens Paul
Smithfield is also going to house the Museum of London in the near-ish furture. But as someone who walks through there every time I go to the office (on London Wall) I agree it’s a shame it will no longer be a market.
It will be a better site for the Museum of London, for sure. I used to walk through Smithfield almost every day on my walk to work, it wasn’t always pretty but it was interesting. I bet when it’s been redeveloped it’ll be impossible to get a seat in the Fox!