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Food

London’s Oldest Market Showed Me the True Meaning of ‘Fresh Meat’

A man with a ironing board-sized smear of blood across his waist throws pork scratchings in the air, catching them in his mouth. Another barks orders to his team across a pile of hollowed-out pig carcasses.
All photos by the author.

There is a man in a blood-stained pair of overalls, standing beside a pink amputated leg, sucking down a half-smoked cigarette and staring at me.

"Morning, love," he breaks out into an enormous smile, flicks the cigarette into a nearby bin, and strolls through the huge plastic curtains back into the delivery area. It is 4.30AM and I am in Smithfield Market, one of the largest and, at 800 years and still chopping, oldest markets in all of Europe.

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London's Smithfield Market. All photos by the author.

London's Smithfield Market. All photos by the author.

Back in 1726, in one of his many long and erstwhile chapters in A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, Daniel Defoe described Smithfield Market as "without question, the greatest in the world." Well, I hope Daniel liked his markets with a side serving of forklift trucks, Arsenal helmets, and sexting because the modern Smithfield is still fucking great.

READ MORE: Apparently Pork Scratchings Are a Health Food Now

As someone brought up as a vegetarian and regularly subjected to the delights of Beanfeast and Tartex, it is quite something to see the sunrise over a stainless steel tray of pig hearts and chicken kidneys. Not unpleasant, by any means, but certainly a long way from the cup-of-tea-and-muesli mornings I'm used to. I haven't seen so much flesh since Freshers Week; the term "meat market" suddenly, dazzlingly making sense. There are heads, thighs, and loins everywhere I look, either sealed in little plastic condoms or hanging from giant hooks in the glass-plated rooms out the back.

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Strolling down the bright, blue lights of the main aisle there are rows of stalls on either side—BJ Meats, Absalom and Tribe, Denton Bros, G&E Meats, Kentas of London, PJ Martinelli, and Longcroft and Old. Such cheek-by-jowl competition could breed the sort of resentment from which world wars are made and yet, the atmosphere is friendly, frenetic, jocular, and tangibly male.

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"Cheers, Tone!" shouts out one man in a pair of white wellies and a matching mesh acrylic trilby. "Pleasure!" hollers back his friend in a long, navy and white pinstripe overall, standing by a yellow plastic tub full of beef. A man with a ironing board-sized smear of blood across his waist throws pork scratchings in the air, catching them in his mouth. Another with a hands-free phone headset barks orders to his team across a pile of hollowed-out pig carcasses. One, not much more than a boy, stands by a display cabinet of sirloin, topside, and shin, drinking a bottle of chocolate Yazoo.

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I don't know if it was the lack of sleep, the quantity of breasts for sale or the sheer number of men on every side, but I don't think I've felt as self-consciously female as I did at Smithfield Market.

Of course, there are women there too. I saw at least two female butchers in overalls and aprons fingering huge cuts of red-pink marbled meat, not to mention a host of female tellers sitting in their little fluorescently-lit cash cabins, totting up payments and counting out change. Nor did I get a single sleazy comment or wolf whistle (well, not until I was cycling away some hours later, when a passing pedestrian informed me I had a"great bum").

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The dominant flavour of Smithfield Market, above the sweet smell of blood and the occasional tang of cheese, is masculinity. Pure London bloke—red-blooded and wet-fleshed. Loud, legs-apart, brace-shouldered, and thick-skinned.

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And so it has always been. A war memorial to the fallen butchers of the First World War on Grand Avenue lists 212 names from Abame to Zani, the Traders' signs are awash with "& Sons," and the football flags, uniforms, and tattoos all speak of a certain, timeless masculinity. I mean Christ, even the on-site ex-boozer was called The Cock Tavern.

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And yet, as I walked back into the milky summer sunshine of that post-dawn, pre-morning light, I felt no discomfort, no disgust. Sure, staring up the bare, black arsehole of a recently-slaughtered pig while you drink your morning coffee is quite strange. Strolling past acres of bones, brisket, and buckets of brawn before you've even had breakfast can do interesting things to your intestines. And staring at a pool of glossy brown livers as the man next to you dabs a smear of plasma from his earlobe can bring the reality of meat-eating into sharp relief.

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READ MORE: I Explored New York Chinatown's Busiest Supermarket at the Worst Possible Time

But if you, like thousands of Britons, start your morning with a sausage sandwich or rasher of bacon, then the truth is that in a cold, brightly-lit room somewhere, large, steak-looking men will have to saw, chop, and slice a dead, hanging animal into pieces in order for you to do so. It's good to remember that sometimes.

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I cross the road back to my bike, through a battalion of matching Transit vans. Out of the corner of my eye I see a man in a long white coat and boots, sitting on the tail-lift, drinking a cup of tea from a dark green mug, staring, blankly, at a tapered, trottered leg.

This article originally appeared on MUNCHIES in June 2015.