Farringdon Market

The avenue under which are the shops of the dealers, and which extends round three sides of the building, is 25 feet high, to what are technically termed the tie-beams, with ventilators ranged at equal distances.

… The chief entrance to the market is by two gates, for wagons, &c., in Stonecutter Street, which has been made double its former width, and two smaller ones for footpassengers; besides these, on each side of the quadrangle, massive oak doors are to be thrown open, from morning till the close of public business.

Then every one was pushing about, the children crying as their naked feet were trodden upon, and the women hurrying off with their baskets or shawls filled with cresses, and the bunch of rushes in their hands.

In one corner of the market, busily tying up their bunches, were three or four girls, seated on the stones, with their legs curled up under them, and the ground near them was green with the leaves they had thrown away.

A saleswoman, seeing me looking at the group, said, 'Ah, you should come here of a summer's morning, and then you'd see 'em, sitting tying up, young and old, upwards of a hundred poor things, as thick as crows in a ploughed field.