Mighty Meats

"Thirty years I have been a butcher on Chatsworth Road," says Alex, the Cypriot owner of Mighty Meats (now at number 46, and originally at number 58). "There was a nice, beautiful market. Nice, very nice. When I came here, off licence was the off licence. Greengrocers was a greengrocers. Butcher shop was a butcher shop. Now you can see, every shop sells everything. I still only sell just meat – original – but we lost everything else. I don’t know if the market coming back will make a difference; the big problem is the supermarkets. Before people would wait in a queue to get their meat. If you come here and you try to park now they charge you a fortune. You go to the supermarket all the parking is free, darling."

According to Alex, Sunday opening about 20 years ago changed everything. Then, when the parking restrictions came in a few years ago, it was the real nail in the coffin. "Before, at the fruit and veg shop that was owned by Italians, there would be between 50 and 100 people inside. And it would sell just fruit and vegetables, not nuts or even eggs. I have never seen anything like it in my life – and I have been in London 40 years. Now everything's changed. Nothing original is left. Now all shops sell everything. There used to be seven butchers in Chatsworth Road. Seven and everybody was happy."