Our English Towns and Villages

by H. R. Wilton Hall

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.

Market Cross and portion of Shelter, Winchester

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.