Greenwich Market - Research.
Greenwich Market
“An ancient village on the banks of the Thames, steeped in Royal history, Greenwich has long been home to a Royal Charter Market which was originally assigned to the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital on the 19th December 1700 for 1,000 years.”
- Quote from http://www.greenwichmarketlondon.com/about/page/market-history
London and Greenwich in particular, is well known for several reasons. It’s the home of the Greenwich Royal Observatory, The Greenwich Maritime Museum, The O2 Arena (formerly the Millennium Dome), The Royal Naval College and of course, Greenwich Market.
As a group we have been assigned Greenwich Market as our site for the Oyster Project. We have visited the site several times, with the building in various states of use. When we visited the second and third times I personally was shocked at a piece of information collected which suggested that the Market had existed in some form or another since 1831 – It did not even occur to us that the market would be that old and still viable to this day.
The Market itself has been housed in two locations throughout its lifetime – It began near the west gate of the RoyalNavalCollege, though it was moved to its current location in order to improve cleanliness on the riverfront and to bring the building standards up that of the RoyalHospital, which was a fairly new building at the time. Another reason for the move was the sheer dangerousness of the area it was situated in, as is clear from the below image, which suggests a very dark and shady area of London, which probably would have been rife with crime, though this was fairly common of many areas of London at the time.
The stall owners themselves have been a key part of the market since its inception, trading goods such as live and dead meat, fish, eggs, butter, poultry, fruit and vegetables initially, before becoming more commercial and allowing a plethora of different products to be traded such as the comic books, antiques, jewelry and fast food.
As time has progressed, so too have the influences and cultures present within the Market. Nowadays one can see people from all nationalities making a trade selling food, items and speciality goods from their homes.
The market itself has fluctuated in it’s success throughout the years due to wars, where it was used for storage in the case of WW1 and just a general loss in sales due to the lack of imports during WW2. The latter situation caused poor business in Greenwich Market right up until the 1980’s, where custom once again boomed, causing a growth in sales and market owners looking to trade.















