Local boy comes back to where it all began.

With the opening of the new Sainsbury's Local in The Cut this month, it is interesting to note that the founder of this now massive supermarket business was born not a cabbage throw from where this new shop is and actually worked on a stall in the original New Cut market.

John James Sainsbury was born in number 5 Oakley Street, Lambeth (what is now known as Baylis Road) on the 12th June 1844; his father, John Sainsbury, was a frame maker for pictures.
John's first job at 14 (round about 1858) was with a grocer in The New Cut Market.
With his father dying in 1863, it was up to John to support his mother and family; five years later he married and set up a small dairy shop in 173 Drury Lane with very claustrophobic accommodation above the shop.

From that small shop was built a massive chain of stores (there were 128 stores flourishing at the time of his death in 1928) probably using his business know how learned on the stall along the way.

Now with well over a thousand stores UK wide, this new local store seems to complete a circle from where it all began.

Help requested and always welcomed.

If anybody has any information on the following areas, The New Cut street market, The Lambeth Walk, The Lower Marsh and Carlisle Lane, in the Victorian era. Also, if you know the makers names of the carts used in the markets, where they were/are made. I would very much like to know any information basically related to the history of the market that you might know about or have heard. Do you know of any family members that used to be costermongers or own or work in shops in any of the streets where the market was held? Maybe you or a family member lived nearby? Any information would be helpful to me.

The beginnings.

This blog has been created to help with my researches into the origins and heyday of the New Cut Market in Lambeth, South London that became notorious in the nineteenth century.  This market, at two miles in length started sometime in the mid 1840's and during the later part of the nineteenth century occupied a continuous  two mile stretch that included:The Cut, Lower Marsh, Carlisle Lane, Sail Street and The Lambeth Walk all the way up to Vauxhall.
Every conceivable item was sold; similar to what a modern market would sell: Fruit and veg, meat and poultry, fish and shellfish, clothes and footwear, hats and head wear, tools etc. This market must have drawn to it people from all over the area for very different reasons; it's my hope that I can find information relating to not just the market but the side trades that fed off it.