Comments on: Long Nights At Old Spitalfields Market

By: London jack

London jack — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 17:37:55 +0000

A wonderful collection of black and white images that really convey the nature and characters of the market as it really was. Beautiful, thank you.

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 07:27:09 +0000

This brings back memories of living close to the market in the early 1980s. In the week coming up to Christmas sleep after 2:30am was a rare thing. The market started much earlier than normal and the volume of lorries, vans and traders working in the early hours made a spectacular, if noisy, scene. It did have it’s compensations though. Every day there was always some surplus that you could get cheaply or for free at 6am. You just didn’t know what your (healthy) diet was going to be each day.

By: Davidmil

Davidmil — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 23:24:53 +0000

As David says above, those shots were taken in the days of real photography. They must have been extremely difficult to take by the available light – and probably a lot of processing was involved to ‘push’ the speed of the film so as to get a useable image.

All credit to the photographers.

By: David

David — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 14:19:30 +0000

Lovely, lovely work.

I used to shoot a lot of stuff like this in the 70s and 80s…small hardware and paint shops, auto mechanic garages, vacuum cleaner shops, small electric motor shops…people working in those places were always interesting folk, and all the bric a brac and tchotchkes they would decorate their work areas with was always fascinating, and usually had a story…I love seeing work like that which is displayed here.

Camera phones and Instagram were the final nails in the coffin of REAL photography.

By: Nicola Davies

Nicola Davies — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 13:19:09 +0000

This took my mind flying back to a night in the late 70’s when I accompanied my husband (who was my boyfriend at the time) to London in his truck to do a delivery in Spitalfields. We arrived early evening and went to a pub for a drink. I so wish I could remember its name. I came from a small town in Wales and I think the boyfriend was keen to show me a slice of life I had never experienced. The pub was wonderful – lots of wood and glass and unchanged for decades it seemed to me. There was a pianist – and a stripper! At a strategic point in her performance she passed around an empty oval Castella cigar tin into which customers were encouraged to put money for a ‘full strip’!! The piano played on, the full strip was duly performed and much beer was consumed. I remember an elderly Sikh gentleman’s turban had started to unwind and he was so tipsy he couldn’t get it back in place. We went back to the truck for a sleep before the delivery was due. Because of the overindulgence in beer we slept for too long and woke to find ourselves almost entirely surrounded by a busy market in full swing around us! He was so embarrassed! Forty years later, in July 2018, I visited Spitalfields again but didn’t find the pub!
Thank you, Gentle Author, for a blog I look forward to every day. Today it has been a time machine which made me 21 again!

By: Helen Breen

Helen Breen — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 12:19:42 +0000

Greetings from Boston,

GA, great shots of Spitalsfield Market at night by these young men with silent Christ Church standing sentinel – thank you.

The workers with their barrows remind me of the old Haymarket in downtown Boston, back in the day. How hard they all worked!

By: Lynne Perrella

Lynne Perrella — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 12:12:33 +0000

—- and this is why I look forward to visiting this remarkable blog every morning.

I so appreciate the opportunity to experience people, places, and passions that I would not have
known about, otherwise. The photos, so excellent in their own right, become elevated by the
story that accompanies them. These images are soaked in cinematic vitality — I am THERE, in that market.

By: Phil maxwell

Phil maxwell — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 10:59:42 +0000

Magnificent archive that should be published.

By: Milo Bell

Milo Bell — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 09:52:10 +0000

I remember stopping off there for a rest after i had taken it into my head to walk back from a friends place on the Isle of dogs to my place off Westbourne grove. It was about 4 in the morning and the place was alive with people and movement. These photos conjure it up perfectly. A wonderful memory.

By: Greg Tingey

Greg Tingey — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 08:36:02 +0000

Reminds me of Borough market, on a February night in 1996, before the current “fashion” one opened, very tentatively ( And, yes, I was there, on the first day … )