flashback: Petticoat Lane and Club Row markets, London 1975

from a retrospective series of a trip to the UK when I was 20, recreated with travel journals, letters home, and photos

Sunday, 13 July 1975

Petticoat Lane Market

I left the hostel at 9:30 for the Petticoat Lane market.  I’d read of it in a newspaper clipping that my mother had given me.  It spread out spider fashion over several streets.  I found a pair of socks for 50p, bright blue and white and I like them.  One vendor was selling multicolour rainbow candles and pottery candle holders. Another, “joss sticks” (incense) for only a few pence.  Other items for sale: “Motzart” records, “Supermarc”, “Tea shirts”.

I remember looking hard for a building where I could climb to an upstairs view.

Petticoat Lane market

Sights like this startled me.

I was more used to this sort of market vendor.

By 11;30, the market had become very crowded.  I felt so sad that I would soon be leaving crazy London far behind. 

Club Row Market

I went up a few blocks to the Club Row market and found that it mostly sold live animals and birds.  There, kittens and fishes, puppies and pigeons and songbirds are sold in one part, and clothes and fruit and veg in the other.  When I came to a booth of shaggy collie type puppies, I saw a lovely scene of three children hanging over the edge of the enclosure.  The cockney stall keeper shoved the children aside saying, “Don’t bother the dogs!” and he then stretched out his arm in a friendly way to avoid, I suppose, giving a bad impression.

[2018: I just read that Club Row market got closed down in the 1980s because of controversy over animal cruelty.  You can read its history in this excellent article.]

Club Row Market

Next: on the same day, Speakers Corner