This London market has been open for 850 years and they're going to

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The irony here is thick enough to cut through with a filet knife:

The oldest meat and fish markets in London, which date back 850 years, are facing permanent closure from 2028. …

Smithfield is the largest wholesale meat market in the UK and one of the biggest in Europe. The current iteration of the market has been trading at the site since the 1860s. Prior to that it was a livestock market, which dated back to the medieval period.

Work has already begun on turning this site into a new cultural and commercial hub, which includes the new London Museum.

Plowing under nearly a millennia’s worth of cultural and commercial history in order to create a new “cultural and commercial hub?”

What a joke!

Here’s a great look at this historic market and its wild warren of retail spaces and meat counters:

It’s a neat place:

In addition to its historicity, the market building itself is beautiful:

The change, meanwhile, is already promising negative real-world effects for vendors there:

Speaking to BBC London before the decision was announced, one trader – who did not want to give his name – said he had been forced to take the compensation offer or ‘leave with nothing’.

The trader, whose family has sold fish at the site for 70 years, added: ‘For what we’ve been offered to vacate the premises, I can’t go and reinstate myself somewhere else.

‘I’ve been told to do my best with what I can do. It’s not great at all’.