Columbia Road Flower Market, London

Columbia Road Flower Market is the street market running through Bethnal Green, among Columbia Road’s Victorian shops off Hackney Road. The market operates on Sundays only, bringing plants, shrubs, bulbs and freshly cut flowers into the street. Its history reaches back to 1869, when Angela Burdett-Coutts created a covered food market with 400 stalls.

That venture closed in 1886, but flower trading endured after being shifted from Saturday to Sunday to suit local Jewish traders. The setting also carries a grim earlier history: in 1831, a gang known as the London Burkers used cottages here to steal newly buried bodies for anatomical sale. Two members were hanged for murder later that year. Look along the shopfronts and stalls: this lively flower market occupies ground once marked by poverty, scandal and a failed food-market experiment.