For 40-50 years before 1974, it had felt inevitable that the old Fruit Veg and Flower Market in Covent Garden would move from its central London site. Clive Boursnell selects his favourite images of the days of the relocation, November 9th to November 11th 1974.

I have known Covent Garden since the 1950s, when as a boy woodsman on the Windsor Crown Estate, I with others, would cut and bind over 130,000 feet of Christmas trees for George Munro’s.

Having worked as an assistant to a fashion photographer in Covent Garden, in 1968 I started to photograph the market. It took about a year for me to get to know the Market and its people to understand that I was serious about telling the story of the Market photographically. I was no “fair- weather photographer”, as one porter suggested. So, I had been photographing the Market for over five years when the move to Nine Elms came.

My photography has always been about showing the market and its people as it uniquely presents itself. Thus, the very few pictures that I show in this article are about the last day, the move and the first day at the New Covent Garden Market. They are pictures that could not have been taken at any other time and capture just that was uppermost in my mind and sights, no longer for a short period, the beautiful still life of fruit or vegetables.

The last week of the old Market saw on the one hand a celebration of the time, yet on the other a dread, a real sense of loss and the awesome realisation of the passing of a 300-year era that would never be seen again. London was awake to what was happening. Film crews, reporters, photographers, artists and so many members of the public, including young girls clad in their stylish grey school uniform coats – all turned up with their cameras. The pubs were full to overflowing, knowing that they would never open again at 5am. The cafes were coming to terms with catering for a new clientele.

But above all, the people of the market faced a fast-moving and changing way of working. Most did make the move to Nine Elms, yet within months, market traders and porters began to disappear. The closure of the original Covent Garden was truly the end of an era; now 50 years on, the 'new' Market is again in transition, but not anywhere near an end.

.       .

.      .