AP PHOTOS: Meat and greet: Historic London market counting down the years

LONDON (AP) — Norman Gregory is an institution within an institution. He’s been working at the historic Smithfield wholesale meat market in central London since 1961, witnessing first hand the rapid transformation of the capital over the decades.

And he’s mainly seen it at night.

As a young lad of just 16, Gregory started work at Smithfield, and bar one year when he decided to try something else, he’s been there as a seller ever since.

And he still loves it, as he readies to turn 80 next month.

“It’s a man’s world down here,” he said. “It’s all active, there’s something different every day.”

There is a routine though. The carcasses roll in to the market in vans starting around 10 p.m. The butchers and traders then do their thing, selling mainly to shops and restaurants, before finishing up at about 6 a.m.

And while most Londoners imbibe a cuppa tea — a coffee if you must — to get them ready for the day, Smithfield workers have been able to have a pint and a full English breakfast after they clock out because some local public houses have had special dispensation to open at the crack of dawn. “Early houses,” they have been dubbed.

But change is coming after the City of London Corporation, the governing body in the capital city’s historic hub, confirmed at the end of 2024 that it will bring an end to its responsibilities to operate Smithfield, as well as the Billingsgate fish market further east, both of which have existed in some shape or form since the 11th century.

The corporation and the Smithfield Market Tenants’ Association, which represents the traders onsite, have reached an agreement to find a site for a “New Smithfield” within the M25, the road that circles London. The new site will continue to serve London and the southeast of England, and it is hoped, allow future traders to expand in a manner of their choosing.

Worthy reasons, for sure, but London will lose another little slice of its heritage, though the impending move of London Museum in 2026 to areas of the market already vacated will ensure that the memory of the market will be preserved.

Smithfield, derived from the olde English word for “smooth field” and built just beyond the old Roman wall, became the go-to place for the sale of horses, sheep and cattle late in the 11th century. It was a tough place, renowned for drunkenness, general rowdiness and violence, especially around the annual Bartholomew Fair, which ran for seven centuries until it was shut down in 1855 after a bit too much trouble.

Smithfield was also a far more bloody place than it is now — and not just because slaughtering took place on site for much of the market's history.

In 1306, Scottish rebel William Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered, while Wat Tyler, who led the failed 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, was spared that horror by only being beheaded in 1381. And let’s not forget the reign of Queen Mary I — aka “Bloody Mary” — in the 16th century when Protestants were burned to death as punishment for their religious beliefs.

Smithfield remained pretty squalid through to the 19th century. The great British author Charles Dickens described it, for example, as a center of “filth and mire,” referencing the market in both ”Oliver Twist” and “Great Expectations.”

With London’s rapid expansion following the Industrial Revolution, it seemed a bit anachronistic to have horses and pigs and oxen roaming around, so the livestock were moved further north and construction of a covered market began in 1866.

Horace Jones, the designer of Tower Bridge, was chosen to be the architect of the new market. He incorporated London’s rapidly expanding railway network and several architectural styles, combining French Renaissance with something a little bit more practical.

Since then, Smithfield has been a wholesale meat market, where traders process the carcasses that come in, primarily for shops and restaurants, though individuals can come if they wish, most notably on Christmas Eve, when the market is full of cheer and color — mainly red.

The Associated Press was granted access to record for posterity life in the market on Christmas Eve, when hundreds of individuals turn up to get their meat for the following day, and on a typical night in January.

For Gregory, it’s been a blast.

“I’d do it all again,” he said.