CHISWICK FLOWER MARKET
Chiswick
FLOWER MARKET
Bridget Osborne looks forward to the creation of a new Flower Market in the centenary year of Chiswick’s old outdoor market A group of residents and businesses in Chiswick has come together to set up a flower market once a month on Sundays on the site of the old Chiswick Market, in front of the row of shops between the police station (now closed) and George IV pub. We have published a business plan and set up a Community Interest Company to run it, with the Director of Abundance London Karen Liebreich, commercial surveyor Ollie Saunder and myself as co-directors. Abundance London has project managed several big community projects in Chiswick and Isleworth. We have council backing and we’re currently working through logistical issues such as licensing and traffic management with LB Hounslow. Our motivation is to try and revitalize the economy of Chiswick High Rd by making it the Columbia Rd of west London. Pre-Coronavirus, Columbia Rd flower market was normally heaving with people and trendy shops have sprung up, many of which only open on Sundays to cater for the crowds. Opening Chiswick Flower Market on the site of Chiswick’s historic market would be a brilliant way of marking the centenary of the original. Towards the end of 1919 Chiswick Market was
18
opened, becoming established in early 1920, in response to a different economic need – men returning home from fighting in the First World War who needed an income, at a time when shops in the High Rd were too few and too expensive to meet consumers’ needs. On 20 February 1920, a correspondent who signed himself merely as ‘X’ wrote to The Chiswick Times: ‘the amount of shop accommodation in the Chiswick High-road is altogether inadequate to the requirements of the locality’. On 27 February The Chiswick Times reported: ‘At a meeting of the Chiswick Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, Mr H Johnson presiding over a good attendance, Mr J Sander moved the following resolution: ‘That in the opinion of this meeting a municipal market for Chiswick as a permanent institution is desirable in order that the public of all classes may have full facilities for the purchase of commodities… … He believed the commodities sold there were such as to benefit the people who had “felt the pinch”, and they were not always those who were termed the working
f @outandaboutmagazines
@outaboutmag
www.outaboutmagazine.co.uk
