Eric Graham is a market man to his bones. Andy Silvester meets the Londoner who keeps Old Spitalfields Market ticking.
LIKE anyone who has spent a long time in the capital, Eric Graham has a story about foxes.
“When they developed the bottom end of the market, they had to clear the catacombs underneath. It was a burial ground,” he tells me. The foxes that had called those vaults home were understandably a bit shaken up.
“Just below where (make-up shop) Benefit is now was my market workshop. Now the rest of the building was empty, so to go across to the other side of the market we’d made holes in the cellars, we used to cycle across, but I also had a drumkit down there.
“I went down one morning and there was a fox in the workshop. And the only way I had to get out was to make a run out of the boards. I hit the bass drum – boom – and away he went like a shot,” he laughs. The drumming didn’t go unpunished, though.
“But he made his mark. He left me a message in the office!”
The 76-year-old Graham is a wonderful storyteller, as you’d expect from a man who has been working at the East End institution Old Spitalfields Market since 1992, now well ensconced in his role as market manager. He’s seen it all, but his more than thirty years of early starts haven’t dulled his enthusiasm for the job, though, which entails gatekeeping and supporting a market of hundreds of traders across a week of markets.
“It’s something you grow into. I’ve been involved in markets for 51 years. I used to work in a tarpaulin company, so we supplied markets around London. So even before I worked in markets, I was there, I loved the hustle and bustle of it.”
In the time he’s been the man with the plan at the Old Spitalfields Market, the site and locale has changed dramatically – but it always has. This part of east London has been a home to a huge variety of immigrant communities over the years – from the Huguenot weavers who built grand homes to the Bangladeshi community arriving in the 1970s.
At the heart of it all sits the old market, now owned by property giant Tribeca Holdings; the ‘old’ of Old Spitalfields defines it from the newer, shinier end towards Bishopsgate, on land owned by the Corporation of the City of London. Old Spitalfields, which abuts Commercial Street, today welcomes around 9m visitors a year to market stalls, food outlets, and high-end retail.
Graham laughs when I ask him if it’s still fun.
“There are days when you curse it – days when you want to shut the door and say I’ve had enough of these guys,” he says.
“But that’s going to happen anywhere, and most of the time it works, and that’s why I’m still here.”
Graham’s role is, in short, to pick the right market traders, make sure they’re in the right places, and (mostly) keep them happy. With a whole host of different themed days that have been added over the years – we’re speaking on antiques Thursday – that means there’s plenty of work to keep him busy. There’s occasional tough love – “sometimes we have to tell people it’s not working” – but broadly he sees his job as giving people the best chance to have what he calls a “good day.”
The historic market, despite being in the centre of London, still retains something of a village feel amongst traders. Graham tells me of couples who met at the market whose children are now manning the stalls. Would it be the same without Eric? Well, London wouldn’t be the same without people like Eric. In a sometimes transient city, it’s institutions like Spitalfields – and Eric – that still give the capital its personality.
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