Old Spitalfields Market

A market has operated on this site since 1638, when Charles I granted a licence for the sale of "flesh, fowl and roots" on Spittle Fields, then a suburb just outside the City walls. The market was re-founded by royal charter under Charles II in 1682 to feed a rapidly growing local population, including the Huguenot silk weavers settling in nearby Spitalfields streets, and grew into one of London's principal wholesale fruit and vegetable markets by the 19th century.

The surviving Victorian market hall, with its distinctive glass-and-iron roof, dates to the 1880s and was extensively restored in the early 2000s after the wholesale trade relocated elsewhere in the 1990s. Today it houses more than 70 stalls and shops selling everything from vintage fashion and handmade ceramics to leather goods and bespoke jewellery, alongside a dense concentration of food stalls covering cuisines from Japanese to Middle Eastern.