MARKETS
1. 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 are 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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, green-grocers in another, and
fishmongers in another. Just as the trades had their special quarters
in 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.
6. 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. It is not
an uncommon thing for such a cross as that to be called the Butter
Cross, 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.
[Illustration: Market Cross and portion of Shelter, Winchester]
[Illustration: Photo. Valentine
CASTLE AND BUTTER MARKET, DUNSTER, SOMERSETSHIRE (page 124)]
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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, however small they may be, have, or at one
time _had_, the right of holding markets.
10. Nobody can set up a stall in the 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. Now this reminds us of the
time when no one except a freeman of the town could trade freely. The
stall-holders were outsiders--"foreigners"--and had to pay to the town
a toll, or due, 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, and help to keep down the rates.
11. 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.
12. There are many places where the market beadle rings a =bell=--in
some towns it is a handbell, in others 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.
13. 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.
=Summary.=--Markets in the open are often held on the same spots
where they have been held for centuries. In some towns covered
markets have been built, and more convenient cattle-markets.
Different kinds of provisions are sold still in different parts of
the market. In some places the Market Cross is called the Butter
Cross. Here public notices were given out, and ill-doers flogged,
put in the _stocks_ or _pillory_, or in the _cage_. Markets are
still very popular, especially on Saturday nights. Stalls in a
market have to be paid for, and the tolls are usually paid to the
market beadle. Town and country meet in the market, and in olden
times they were the chief means for providing the towns with food.