Markets
One of the pleasantest sights, to a Londoner at any rate, is the
market-place of an old-fashioned country town on a market-day.
In many such towns the weekly market is held, in the open air,
in the same place where it has been held for centuries. Probably
none of the houses round the market-square is as old as the
market, but the buildings, altered and rebuilt as they have been,
take us back several centuries, and speak of days long gone by.
A good many towns have built covered markets. Some of them are
near the old market-place, but in other cases the market is now
held in quite another part of the town. Cattle-markets, which
used to be held in the open street in a busy thoroughfare, are
now often held in places more suitable for that purpose some
distance away from their old quarters.
Corn-markets are held in most market-towns, frequently on the
same day as the general market, and many towns now boast a
corn-exchange. Then, too, in some places there are markets held
in connection with the chief trade of the neighbourhood.
The market-house is often a curious building. You may almost
speak of it as "a big room on legs". There is a large room
standing on stone or wooden arches. The open space underneath
serves to shelter some of the market-stalls, and a staircase
leads up from the street to the room above, where the town
council holds its meetings. On the roof of this building is
a turret containing a clock, and perhaps a fire-bell and a
market-bell. There is such a quaint old market-house still
standing at Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, but so many of these
old buildings have been pulled down to make way for larger
structures, in which the town can carry on its business, and
where the various officers can have their offices, that the town
hall is mostly now a smart modern building.
[Illustration: _Market Cross and Portion of Shelter, Winchester_]
The stalls set up on the market-day are of the same simple kind
as those which have been used for centuries. It is curious to
notice how the different trades keep to different parts of the
market-place--butchers in one place, greengrocers in another,
and fishmongers in another. Just as the trades had their special
quarters in the town, so they had in the market. Things have
altogether changed as far as the shops are concerned, but the
setting out of the market is almost exactly the same to-day as it
was five hundred years ago.
The market cross still remains in some towns, but the cross
itself has in many cases disappeared long ago. In some places the
steps and the lower part of the cross still remain, but there is
a kind of open shed built round it to form a shelter. Some of
these shelters are very ornamental, like those at Chichester and
Winchester.[17] It is not an uncommon thing for such a cross as
that to be called the Butter Cross,[18] from the fact that around
the cross was held the butter-market. Some of these shelters are
quaint rather than beautiful, and cover the town pump, which is
now carefully locked up. In some places a drinking-fountain stands
where once the cross stood. At the cross a good deal of business
was done. The mayor or his officers would read out public notices
there on the market-day, that everybody might hear. Not far from
the cross was the cage, where folk who had been "taken up" were set
for a time. The stocks, the pillory, and the whipping-post, in the
seventeenth century, were usually here in the market-place, not far
from the cross.
[17] This was built in the fifteenth century; but of course
it has been restored since then. At the end of the eighteenth
century the authorities of the city actually sold it to a
gentleman who proposed to place it in his own pleasure-ground;
but the people of the city drove away the workmen who were sent
to remove it, and so it had to remain in its ancient place.
[18] Such a Butter Cross is seen in the view of Dunster, facing
p. 105.
There is much to see in a market-place on a market-day. If the
market-day is Saturday, you will find the place thronged with
people, especially at night; and even quite small towns are then so
crowded that you wonder where the people come from.
Fairs, in the Middle Ages, provided for much of the wholesale trade
of the country, and markets for the retail trade. The two were very
much alike, and the rights to hold an annual fair and a weekly
market mostly went together.
[Illustration: _Market Scene in the Middle Ages. The market cross
is taken from an old print of the market cross at Malmesbury_
(_Note the Pillory, the Whipping-post, and the Stocks._)]
Some places had, and still have, more than one market a week. In
many places the market has quite died out now, but in the early
days one of the first steps of a "tun" towards becoming a "town"
was to obtain the right to hold a market. There are many of our
modern towns which have grown up in manufacturing districts,
near great railway centres, or near docks and railway stations,
which have no market. Nearly all of our old towns have, or at one
time _had_, the right of holding markets.
Nobody can set up a stall in a market as he pleases. On the
market-day you will see the beadle going about from stall to
stall taking the toll from each stall-holder. In many cases he
wears an old-fashioned dress trimmed with gold lace. He reminds
us of the time when no one except a freeman of the town could
trade freely. The stall-holders were "foreigners", and had to pay
to the town a toll for permission to sell in the town. In our day
you can go and settle in any town you please, and open a shop
just as you like, but you cannot so easily take a stall and sell
in the market: you must pay the market toll even now. Such tolls
go towards the expenses of the town.
In the market the town and the country meet. In these days, when
the produce of the country can be quickly sent into the heart of
the largest town, the country provision-markets are not of as
much importance as they once were, but they are very useful and
very popular still.
There are many places where the market beadle rings a hand-bell,
or a bell in the clock-tower, to give notice of the opening and
closing of the market. In former days, if a man dared to sell
anything before the bell was rung in the morning, or after it had
rung in the evening, he was very severely punished. Even now,
goods may not be sold in the market before or after the regular
market hours.
There were proper town officers appointed by the mayor and
corporation to look after the markets, and to see that goods were
sold at the proper market price, and that there was no cheating
in weight and measure, and in the quality of the goods sold.