Throughout London’s history, marketplaces have not only been integral to its economy but also to how the city was imagined. Drawing on a diverse range of archives and sources—from tabloid journalism and film, through to oral history and photography—this article examines the ‘narration of London’ at one of the city’s most famous market sites, Smithfield. It focuses upon three moments when London’s meat market came to be seen as emblematic of the city’s story: as an ‘anvil’ for modernisation in the mid-nineteenth century; as an ‘insider’s’ account of the commercial empire in the early twentieth century; and as the last remnant of a ‘London lost’ on the eve of a new millennium. This article argues that the narrative power of the marketplace lies in its capacity for temporal rupture and connection—an ideal stage for dramatising the relationship between urban past and present. It shows how starkly and stereotypically gendered representations of Smithfield’s male workforce became one important means of understanding and articulating urban change.
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