Comments on: Night at the Spitalfields Market, 1991

By: Lindsay Cleaver

Lindsay Cleaver — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 14:44:14 +0000

Hi Kate and Enid

If you are still out there, I’d love to get in touch. I believe that Edwin was probably my mother’s half-brother.

By: Micky Fuller

Micky Fuller — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 20:33:08 +0000

I worked with my late pal Gerry Palmer on the coffee stall by Spitalfields Church in the70s. It was owned by an Italian boxer and was called ” The Golden Gloves”. Wonderful fun filled times serving the porters, lorry drivers, cabbies, occasional celebrities, tramps and prostitutes. One of the best jobs I have ever had!!!

By: Paul dashwood (toddy)

Paul dashwood (toddy) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 22:01:21 +0000

I used to come here with my father bill dashwood and his partner peter beard in the 80s learning the trade ,they were both in the trade long before ,both with there fathers ..so good memories of all the old characters.porters and salesmen.cart minders ..when the placed closed in the 90s and moved to where it is now everything changed.for the worse I’m afraid ……still happy to have lived it ..

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 08:41:30 +0000

Hi Kate

Just seen potter oyler ltd in an old rerun of Minder on TV this morning. Happened to Google and see your comment. Episode is S5E2 what makes shamy run?

By: Matthew Allen

Matthew Allen — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 23:55:27 +0000

From the age of 7 I used to go with my dad on a Saturday morning to get stock for the shop. We used to get there about 2am and then go around the market finding the fruit and veg needed, then I would be sent back to the van to get the barrow to go around and collect all the produce purchased and load up the van while my dad looked for anything we hadn’t found. It all seemed so exciting then, the smells, the people, manuvering the barrow around trucks and forklifts so we could be finished by 7am to get a couple of salty bacon sandwiches and a coffee in the cafe next to where the flowers were sold. I have been there once since it was gentrified and I find it difficult to see. It all looks so different now, I miss those days…

By: Kate

Kate — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:16:51 +0000

Hi Enid, Edwin and Edie were my dad’s grandparents. Pop him an email on potteroyler@gmail.com, he would love to hear from you.

By: Enid Bates

Enid Bates — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 19:23:21 +0000

I am very eager to contact any of the Oyler family that were connected to or are descended from Edwin Oyler of Covent Garden Fruit and vegetable market.
My mothers name was Ivy Finch and she had an uncle and aunt called Edwin and Edie Oyler.
Aunt Edie used to visit us in Forest Hill after the end of the Second World War. She always wore lot of jewellery especially rings. My Mother used to worry about this. One day we heard that Aunt Edie had been involved in a road accident and had been found dead in a road and all her jewellery was missing.
Please send me an email if you have any information.
Thank you Enid Bates

By: Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:27:17 +0000

I use to do the market a few years ago, when it was not fruit and veg and flowers, I sold picture frames tin toys and bric a brac, I dont like what they have to the area and market now, its food everywhere now

By: Ted Weedon

Ted Weedon — Sun, 29 Nov 2015 10:54:38 +0000

Post-war my father was a greengrocer in Wick Road, Hackney (before the war, from 1920, he had been an offal butcher in The Broadway) and between 1947 and 1956 I frequently went with him to Spitalfields market on a Saturday morning. I was an apprentice at a printer’s and the visits to the market were a delightful visit to another world. An excitement quite different from my normal routine.

Following the Saturday market visit we would take a coster barrow laden with produce to a block of flats close to Victorial Park where I would make door-to-d00r calls on our regular customers while he served anyone who came to the barrow. In these days of produce being shipped into the UK by plane it is easy to forget that back then our food had seasons and there would be many things that were not available except at their time of the year, and many things we take for granted were hardly seen at all.

I’m grateful to have had those experiences!

By: Bob and Ernie

Bob and Ernie — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 23:06:27 +0000

Long gone are the good old day’s,!!!!! We had a family business, Dino’s Cafe in Crispin Strret.
I have fantastic memories, making teas , bacon sausages fried eggs etc….
On God Friday we had to be there at midnight to butter hundred’s of hot cross buns. Them days will never come back so sad. Dealing with all the starving market traders. every one was friendly, Thanks to all our customers, it was a pleasure serving you all.