By the latter part of the twentieth century, however, that world began to disappear. Wholesale trading moved elsewhere, traditional industries declined and the neighbourhood experienced the economic pressures that affected much of the East End. The old market faced an uncertain future, while the buildings and streets around it attracted increasing attention from developers, artists and a new generation of businesses.

The transformation that followed was dramatic. The historic market buildings were restored and Old Spitalfields Market emerged in a new form, bringing together independent retailers, designers, restaurants, food stalls and creative enterprises. What had once been primarily a place of necessity became a destination in its own right. Today, visitors arrive from across London and beyond, drawn by its architecture, food, fashion and atmosphere.

Yet the new Spitalfields exists alongside the memory of the old. The market's contemporary character reflects a very different East London from the one inhabited by silk weavers, tailors, fruit merchants and immigrant families. Rising property values and the arrival of affluent residents have transformed the surrounding streets, creating the familiar tensions between preservation, prosperity and gentrification. The question is not whether Spitalfields has changed. It unquestionably has, but what remains visible beneath those changes?

Perhaps that is what makes Spitalfields so compelling. It is a place where the past has not disappeared so much as been layered over. The Huguenot weaver, the Jewish tailor, the Bangladeshi shopkeeper, the market trader and today's designer or restaurateur occupy different moments in the same continuing story.

To walk through Spitalfields today is to move between different versions of London. The fashionable marketplace of the present stands upon the working market of the past, and both belong to the same restless city. Its history is not simply one of decline and renewal, but of continual reinvention. A story of people arriving, adapting and making a place their own.