User:Newcutmarket

THE NEW CUT MARKET.

This was a street market in Lambeth, South London. At its height, the market stretched over two miles from the corner of what was then Broadwall and the New Cut, which was the boundary of Lambeth and Southwark, going westward along the New Cut, over Waterloo Road, down Lower Marsh, it crossed Westminster Bridge Road, down Carlisle Lane, meeting up with Hercules Road and then crossed Lambeth Road, before carrying on down Sail Street and Juxon Street before joining up with, and finally ending, somewhere along the Lambeth Walk.

The earliest reference to the market in any written document comes from the Lambeth Parish Vestry minutes of 1845, wherein, the market was arousing complaints because of obstruction and religious outrage at Sunday trading.

By 1856 a formal petition was signed by 74 shopkeepers from the Lower Marsh, asking the Lambeth Board of Vestry to allow the costermongers to keep their stalls after the police had removed some of them because of obstruction:

''To the gentlemen of the board of vestry of the parish of Lambeth.

Gentlemen

The humble petition of the Costermongers residents of the parish of Lambeth showeth that your petitioners have been getting their living for many years by keeping stalls in the Lower Marsh. Through the removal of their stalls by the police, your petitioners,with their wives and families, are deprived of the means of getting an honest livelihood. Your petitioners therefore pray the Board of Vestry permission to stand in the Lower Marsh and as such regulations as the gentleman of the board may deem fit and we on our part will pledge ourselves faithfully to observe the same.

On behalf of the Costermongers

Charles Robinson.''

This formal permission was refused and many costers simply carried on regardless of the illegality of their pitch

The market was notorious, it was referred to by both Henry Mayhew, William Booth and Charles Dickens; its primary source of customers were the working classes that inhabited the area.

The growth of the market can be linked with the growth of Waterloo Station which opened in 1848 and which came to dominate the area so much that it changed the area name; the markets severance as a continuous line can also be traced to the building work done of the late 1890's.

At some point, during the nineteenth or early twentieth century, the market broke into two parts, with the removal of stalls from Carlisle Lane and sail street; this may have been due to the widening of the arches that spanned Carlisle Lane, Upper Marsh, Westminster Bridge Road and Sail Street. The remaining markets in The Cut, Lower Marsh and Lambeth Walk continued to flourish until after the Second World War, when due to bomb damage and the road re-developments and urban regeneration projects of the 1960's and 70's plus the growth of supermarkets and convenience shopping, all that remained of the original market was a hand full of stalls on lower marsh. The market has a number of original early twentieth century barrows that are still in working use; these were built and sold or leased out by Joseph Tappy who set up his business in 1910 and which carried on trading until the late nineteen eighties.