Smithfield meat market

Just passing through. Activities start at 10pm and closes at 7.00am.

It's under renovation, not a place to visit

Cheaper than local supermarket but have to wake up at 3am. Great selection. Walk with care as busy butchers pushing trolleys with priority first. Cash or credit card. You have to pay for parking. So it bulk buy to cover lost

The very last of the wholesale markets of the beating heart of what once was a major part of the City of London which fed the retail markets throughout London and the whole country beyond,now banished to the some of the worst locations possible to ply their trade, Billingsgate and Covent Garden struggle to survive whereas Smithfield has clung on where it has been for over 800 years, the lesser wholesale market to the east, Spitalfield's has long since gone and has been gentrified, a sad loss since it doesn't provide food to a growing population any more, I even mourn the passing of the Newspapers of Fleet Street, a noisy bustling hub of the city, once again it hosted a vibrant collection of trades which fed it's noisy activity, it too has been banished to the Wastelands of Docklands depriving the city of the vibrancy and mix of people that made it great, Smithfield Meat Market might be a Dinosaur but there have been a huge decline in jobs in London because we have lost the the top of the pyramid which fed all the other of hundreds of trades below them and the thousands of people which owed their livelihood to the vibrancy of trade which made London what is now, a sad loss for no reason because in these troubled times it could have kept the city and the country supplied with food as a central hub as it did for hundreds of years.