Market Court photographed in 1868, just prior to its demolition

Market Court was one of the rookeries (colloquial term for slum) along Kensington High Street (later the Barker's site) dating from the 1770s. The men primarily worked in the market gardens while their wives took in laundry or hawked wares in the High Street. During the cholera epidemics the death toll was terrible and they were finally demolished in 1870.