Roman Road Market in the 1990s [photoessay]
We found a bunch of the best Roman Road Market 1990s flashback images for you to enjoy.
Scroll through and let 90s nostalgia begin. The 1990s may seem like only yesterday, but it was nearly 30 years ago and things have changed a bit. Multicoloured windbreaker jackets really did used to be in fashion.
These and many other images of streets around Bow, Mile End and Globe Town are freely available at the Tower Hamlets Local History and Archives.
Roman Road Market has been running for over 150 years. It began in 1843, when it was illegal ‘but withstood several attempts to close it down’. It was recorded as a fully fledged market in 1887 by Booth, who toured the area with the local policeman and reported that ‘Roman Road…is one of the great market streets in London. Things to be bought of every sort, even patent leather shoes. Some demand for good quality as well as for cheapness’. The market is the heart of Bow, and ‘going down the Roman’ has been a tradition for generations.
Today, market days are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but shops are open all week. The Old Ford and Bow Traders and Shopkeepers Union was inaugurated in 1910 to promote the welfare of costermongers and traders as well as those they lived alongside, and there have been traders groups ever since.
Photographs courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives with special thanks to photographers Mrs C. Ely, Mrs H. Bazalgette, Robert Anthony, Kenneth Newman, F. Holingbery and the Borough Architect and Planning Department.
If you like this, you might also like our images of Roman Road Market in the 1960s.
Visit Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives at 277 Bancroft Rd, London E1 4DQ