We cannot think of the old market-house without remembering the
animated scene around it of a market day. On the higher side, at the
corn-market steps, opposite the ‘Golden Lion,’ the jolly farmers and
their buxom wives would be seen arriving, seated each on two or more
sacks of grain, with a basket of butter and eggs on the dame’s arm, and
probably a basket of poultry on that of her lord. The crowing,
squalling, laughing, and scolding, showed a sound heart and lungs, and
that the old folks were neither ashamed nor afraid to be seen to do
their own work; and the appetizing steam which ascended through the
open kitchen window of the cosy hostel, at the foot of the stairs, told
them, as the screeching, hard-labouring, roasting-jack, as plainly as
jack could speak, that plenty of good substantial fare would soon be
ready for their equally substantial appetites. There is no mistake
about it; there was less nonsense about people then than now. At that
time the ladies of squires, merchants, and farmers, did their own
marketing, aye and often such dames as Mesdames Noye, Trezillian,
Ustick, Pender, in the west country, and others of equal rank in town,
would ride to mill on sacks of corn and bolt the meal themselves. The
sturdy butchers—to be seen in the meat market then—were mostly
occupiers of land near the town, and cultivated many of the farms of
Madron. The crooks with which the transverse bars (between the stalls
and overhead in all parts of the house) were armed, sometimes caught in
the ladies’ towering head-dresses.