Petticoat Lane Market, an adjacent daily market in Spitalfields, abandoned after hours
‘flux is a key part of identity ’
— Mark Wigley. Local Knowledge
Several years ago a similar message to that found in Hugo’s story could be found scratched into the almost permanently slickened patchwork of asphalt in the entrance of the Old Spitalfields Market, in the east end of London, UK (one of the few remaining Victorian market halls in the city). Looking like a piece of late night vandalism, the six words this will all be fields again still resonate with a sense of urgency, as a promise that under the surface of the neighbourhood lay something more than just dirt. Perhaps something supra-natural is the latent identity of the city. What is more, like the message found in Notre Dame de Paris , this one has also been removed as a consequence of urban regeneration, paved over during recent renovations. As with Paris, the city of London has its own propensity for flux. It is a theme running quite consistently through literature and art even as far back as into the Victorian city (from the writing of Dickens to the more recent psycho- geographical exploits of writers such as Iain Sinclair). Located within its massive expanse, in what has recently been labelled in both feasibility studies and master plans alike as the ‘inner city fringe’, the two hundred and fifty acre neighbourhood of Spitalfields sits as a particularly ambiguous threshold between a very affluent city centre and a traditionally neglected east end. There has always been an underlying alterity to the neighbourhood. For hundreds of years, it was one of the seven points along the ancient city wall selectively breeched as a gateway between the capital and the rest of the empire, however, in a modernised London, that limit seems to have been translated into the thick division between very disparate contexts.
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