The signs outside Bermondsey Antique Market say it is world famous. It opens at 4am (something to do with an ancient law about selling stolen items on before sunrise to escape prosecution) each Friday but is pretty world weary by 12.30pm. The very last knockings: most of the stalls already packed up and the traders are gabbing and counting their fish knives and busted watches before wrapping them in old newspapers and laundry bags, shoving them into vans or Volvo estates and going off for a snooze. Is it worth arriving at 4am? I'll tell you after I've tried it, though I suspect it probably isn't.Apartment blocks have gone up around what was the market square, overshadowing it somewhat. But there's still a bit of old colour across the way in Bermondsey St, which hasn't quite up and come. I would imagine there were quite a few furniture dealers here at one time but now there is just one with another in one of the side yards. Happily, the greasy spoon is still open - £4.50 for fish, chips and peas, bread and butter - and the other eating places and the boozer don't look too awful. The best thing, though, are the little yards and alleys - one contains a house made up, it appears, of interlocking lorry containers, stacked on one another, with metal stairs up the side.
This is an area that has been built on and built on and built on over centuries and although the majority of the buildings are Victorian or Georgian, the layout probably hasn't changed much. Here's a nice painting of Bermondsey fete in 1569 by Joris Hoefnagel. The position would be just about where the market is today, and the track running north to the river was - or became - Horselydown Lane before being renamed Tower Bridge Rd.
