London is getting another massive food market at a historic location

LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 13: A cyclist passes Smithfield Market on February 13, 2023 in London, England. Central London's Smithfield meat market, which dates from the 10th century, will relocate to a purpose-built site in Dagenham as part of a 1 billion GBP project to combine the city's wholesale markets under one roof. The vacated area will house the re-located Museum of London. The move from Smithfield faced opposition from meat traders, who had threatened to invoke a royal charter to remain at the site. However, the new market is expected to bring 2,700 new jobs to the borough of Barking and Dagenham. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) — (Image credit: Carl Court via Getty Images)

Smithfield market is currently home to the largest wholesale meat market in the UK, but something else far more interesting to the average person is coming to the area.

A food market is set to take up a currently mostly unused part of the Smithfield market area, known as the The Annexe buildings.

These sit just down the road from the upcoming London Museum, which is due to open “towards the end of 2026.”

The market won’t be open until early 2028 according to current plans announced by the City of London Corporation, but should go some way to making the area more of a destination.

It’s intended to function as a “kitchen of the universe,” a home to all manner of different cuisines, based around a “curated mix of established and start-up chefs.”

A new era for the market

The opening ties in with the planned closure of the Smithfield wholesale meat and fish markets — by 2028 — with the current fish market part of the space earmarked for this new food destination.

We’re yet to see any mock-ups of how the space is envisioned, but obvious comparisons will be made to Borough Market, and those of Spitalfields and Seven Dials.

“Smithfield has always been London's kitchen, a place of trade, energy and life for over a thousand years. The Annexe redevelopment honours that history while giving this remarkable corner of the Square Mile a bold new future,” says Chris Hayward, City of London Corporation Policy Chairman.

“Alongside the new London Museum and the Barbican, it will help make Smithfield somewhere Londoners and visitors come back to again and again not for one particular reason, but because there is always something extraordinary to discover.”

This is part of the City of London’s strategy to make this area of the capital more lively during the weekend, rather than a relative dead zone compared to spaces just a few hundred metres away.

Its opening shouldn’t be too far removed from the second stage of the London Museum’s launch. While the main museum space is set to open later this year, the former poultry market area set to home the “temporary exhibitions, collection stores and learning centre” is earmarked for 2028.

There’s more, too. A hotel is planned for yet another currently unused part of the Smithfield market area’s buildings, in 2030, including a “pocket park” green space that will be used for “community events, digital art, and live performances.”

It sounds like we’ll finally have a reason to head to Barbican tube other than attending an event at the Barbican centre itself.

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Andrew Williams has written about all sorts of stuff for more than a decade — from tech and fitness to entertainment and fashion. He has written for a stack of magazines and websites including Wired, TrustedReviews, TechRadar and Stuff, enjoys going to gigs and painting in his spare time. He's also suspiciously good at poker.

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