If I walk through any remaining street
markets nowadays, my eyes are always on the lookout for anything to
do with market paraphernalia and, in particular, market carts and
where they come from.
So walking through Chapel Market in
Islington, North London, the other week; I was pleasantly surprised
to find a cart still being used albeit very ungraciously as a storage
receptacle for old boxes.
Upon closer inspection I was further
amazed that the cart itself was of two parts: the chassis, which
had a Tappy name carved into it and an address “24 Fitzalan Street,
SE” a street which still survives to this day and is just off of
The Lambeth Walk; and a top part which had the name of “Hiller Bros
64 Squires Street E2”. Hiller Brothers carts have been well documented
in the blog article by The Gentle Author on the Barrows of Spitalfields here.
This was informative for me in two
ways: I now have another address that Joseph Tappy used as a works
premises; and I have never seen a cart hybrid such as this before and
wonder how and when it came to be made.
What is a South London cart doing in
North London? Didn't North London have their own nearby firm of cart
builders/leasers? Maybe it was somebody that migrated about the
markets of London, had bought his/her own cart and had left it for
some reason at Chapel Market?Maybe someone who was leasing a cart off the Tappy firm decided to do a moonlight flit, cart and all.
Why the creation of this 'hybrid'? I
can only assume it was done because the original top half, which
would have been a Tappy, was destroyed in some way, either through
neglect or damage; and replaced with a part that was available. Plus,
I am also assuming that this reconstruction must have been done after
both the families had ceased trading, it is possible that Hiller Bros
could have created and put the top part on the chassis.As usual, if anybody knows anything or can help with this, it would be helpful to me.
An intriguing find nonetheless.
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