Founder Stephanie Smith at her stall in Navigator Square

FOR 20 years, traders at Archway Market have laid out their wares come rain, shine, and plenty of wind.

Ahead of the big anniversary, the Tribune spoke to founder Stephanie Smith about creating a local institution “where people can feel connected to where they live” – and plans for a new evening market too.

Ms Smith had traded on and off since she was a teenager and, 20 years ago, was working in Portobello while living in Archway, catching a lift west with a friend every week.

“I longed to have my own thing, and I would walk past that square and think it was just the perfect place for a market,” she said of the space outside Hill House in Junction Road.

Today it is filled with flowerbeds and sandwiched between Sainsbury’s and M&S, but the square was empty back then, and Ms Smith got permission to clean it up, install lights, and host the Archway market she wanted.

Before long she had 30 traders – some of them recruited via advertising in the Tribune.

“It was good luck really, because leaping forward 18 months they sold the building and the new owners booted us out,” said Ms Smith.

Archway Market moved to a section of wide pavement on the corner of Holloway Road and St John’s Grove, before relocating to its current home in Navigator Square after the gyratory was pedestrianised in 2017.

The market in Navigator Square, Archway

A lot has changed since the early days – apart from Ms Smith’s rent, which has only gone up £2 in 20 years.

“I used to sell objects, and I could go round local charity shops in Archway, Crouch End, Tufnell Park, with a trolley and get loads of stock,” she said.

“But the charity shops have changed so much – they have experts that take away the good stuff before it even hits the shelves so it’s very rare to get a good find like I used to, in London anyway.”

And while some traders have been at Archway Market for a decade or more, there is a bittersweetness to the anniversary for Ms Smith since her friend Jon Privett, a bookseller who was with her from the first, died in 2023.

A “clever, witty, wonderful human”, Jon set up the canal boat bookshop Word on the Water in King’s Cross, where Ms Smith also works – and he left her his book stall when he passed.

“I’m a bit obsessed with it now,” said Ms Smith, an avid reader who organised the ArchWay With Words book festival until 2019.

“It’s such a pleasure to hear conversations strike up, and have conver­sations with people about the books they choose. I enjoy that sense of maintaining a neighbour­hood where people can feel connected to where they live, that they belong, that they can meet their neighbours.

“I have had people tell me the market is very important for their wellbeing – to have something to get out of the house for, to have somewhere to go. So to know that I have contributed to that is a satisfying thing.”

And for the first time this spring, Archway Market will be open not just on Saturday mornings but on Wednesday afternoons too – held in the back function room of the Archway Tavern and focused on second-hand and upcycled goodies from local makers.

If one thing has stayed the same since the market started in 2006, it is Archway’s notorious wind. “I’m not even half a per cent more used to it – I haven’t made peace with it at all in 20 years,” Ms Smith said.