Once a graveyard for Roman London, the old Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market is no more. The market buildings are currently used to house and showcase many interesting enterprises, with a daily market, especially lively on a Sunday. Recently graduated fashion and furniture design students have their stalls here, alongside organic food stalls and second-hand records It is Trendy.
There is a splendid Hawksmoor5 church, and a few intact early Georgian streets that originally housed London's initial wave of Huguenot immigrants in the 18th Century. This area has always been one of London's first stops for immigrants, as can now be exemplified by the Brick Lane mosque. This building was formerly a synagogue, and before that a Catholic church, having started its useful life as a Protestant church for the Huguenots.
Brick Lane is the vibrant centre of the large Bangladeshi population in this part of London, plus an overflow of designers and students from Spitalfields and a few remaining Jewish concerns, such as a 24 hour bakery. Brick Lane is, on Sundays, a street market - an extension of Petticoat Lane, but selling even tattier stuff. There was a pet market until a few years ago, and there is still a bike market6. On side streets the desperate and homeless sell their last bits and pieces.