Escorts in Aldgate, EC3N and E1: who is close, and how soon
Where does a free afternoon east of the City take you, if what you want is to browse rather than to sightsee? From Aldgate the answer runs three ways at once: north into the stalls of Middlesex Street and the old market halls of Spitalfields, west under the glass roof of Leadenhall, and east along Whitechapel Road into the streets where the East End once made the clothes half of London wore. None of it is polished, much of it is cheap, and all of it is within walking distance of the district's hotels, which makes Aldgate a good base for a day of shopping that turns into an evening with Aldgate escorts. Both postcodes lie well east of where the board lives, so she crosses the City from the west to reach you, usually a little over an hour once the booking is agreed and longer as the working day ends; the chat gives her precise time as she leaves, and the lengths are listed on the rates.
On the ground
Aldgate in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameE1 8GP, E1 8EN, EC3N 4DJ, EC3N 4AJ, EC3A 7AB.
Nearest stations
Walking timeAldgate, 1 minute. Aldgate East, 3 minutes. Tower Hill, 6 minutes.
Getting there
EC3N, E1Travel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Aldgate
Who works here
On the board in Aldgate
The six prints above are a first shortlist for Aldgate tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
The Lane, and the clothes it was named for
Petticoat Lane took its name from the clothes sold along it, and when the Victorians thought the name improper and renamed the street Middlesex Street, the market simply ignored them. It is still the Lane to everybody who shops there. On weekdays a smaller market works Wentworth Street, the side street running east; on Sunday mornings the stalls spread along Middlesex Street itself and into the lanes around it.
What it sells is mostly things to wear, as it always has: leather jackets hanging in rows, cheap fashion, bolts of fabric, handbags, belts and suitcases. It is a bargain market, not a designer one, and the fun is in the haggling and the sheer quantity rather than any single find. The Lane grew out of the clothing trade of the old East End, when tailors' workshops filled the streets from here to Whitechapel, first run by Jewish families and later by Bangladeshi ones.
Further east, past Aldgate East station, Whitechapel Market lines the broad pavement of Whitechapel Road with stalls of fruit, vegetables, fabric and household goods. It is a neighbourhood market rather than a visitor one, and all the more interesting for it.
Note 03
Leadenhall, the covered arcade to the west
A few minutes back towards the towers, Leadenhall Market has been a market of one kind or another since the Middle Ages. Today it is a covered arcade of shops, cafés and pubs under a painted Victorian roof, and it keeps City hours: busy at lunchtime, busier straight after work, and largely shuttered at the weekend.
Shopping there is less about bargains than about small, well made things: shoes, shirts, a cheese counter, a bottle of wine, the kind of purchase a man makes on his way back to the hotel. After six the arcade turns into one long bar, with office crowds standing under the roof, and the shopping gives way to the evening without anyone deciding it should.
Note 04
North to the market halls and Brick Lane
Walk north up Middlesex Street, past the last of the office towers, and you reach Old Spitalfields Market on Commercial Street, a great covered hall that was for centuries the wholesale fruit and vegetable market. The traders have long gone east; in their place are stalls of clothes, design, jewellery, prints and food, open through the week, with the shops and restaurants round the edges of the hall.
A street further on, Brick Lane has its own Sunday market, spread through the yards of the Old Truman Brewery and down the lane itself: vintage clothing by the rail, records, furniture, bric-a-brac and street food. At the northern end the bagel shops bake through the night, and the long run of curry houses further south gives the lane its other reputation. Between the Lane, the halls and the brewery yards, a Sunday here can fill itself without any plan at all.
Beyond Shoreditch, Columbia Road turns into a flower market every Sunday morning, the street packed from end to end with buckets of cut stems and potted plants and the stallholders calling out their prices as the morning wears on. It is a longer walk than the others, or a short ride, and an armful of flowers from there is about the nicest thing a shopping day east of the City can bring back to a hotel room.
Note 05
After the stalls pack up
The markets are daytime things. By late afternoon the stalls on Middlesex Street have been packed into vans, the Spitalfields traders are counting up, and the choice is between the restaurants round the market halls, the curry houses of Brick Lane and the City bars around Leadenhall. The most comfortable version of the day is to shop until the light goes, drop the bags at the hotel, change, and let the evening begin there.
From Aldgate the neighbouring districts are all within reach on foot: Shoreditch to the north beyond the market halls, the City of London to the west, and Tower Bridge down to the south, where the river takes over from the shops.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Aldgate
Asked most often
Aldgate, asked and answered
Is Sunday the day to shop round here?
What do the stalls on Middlesex Street actually sell?
Is Leadenhall Market worth visiting for the shops?
Where can I find vintage clothes nearby?
Can an afternoon of shopping run on into dinner?
One zone either way
Next along from Aldgate
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.