Markets
and Fairs
"‘The farmers used to bring their animals through to
market…through the town. The sheep and the cattle. They
used to have a trough of water out there for the animals to
drink.’ 1
Ledbury was no more than a village in 1068. Its important
church served a wide district and it was only natural that
attendance at church should be combined with all sorts of
marketing. The first recorded Ledbury market charter was
issued by King Stephen to Bishop Robert de Bethune in 1138.
‘Know that I grant Robert, bishop of Hereford, may have a
market on Sunday of each week in his manor of Ledbury’.
Each Sunday, and on the great days of the Christian
calendar, Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, the Lower Cross
and the lane leading up to the church would be the scene of
intense activity. The area would be full of cattle, sheep,
poultry, and farm produce of all kinds. Specialist
craftsmen and pedlars would vend their wares. Church Holy
Days became market and fair days and holidays. Later, the
church authorities discouraged trading on Sundays, and
Monday became the market day in Ledbury.
On market and fair days the High Street would have been
filled with stalls, goods and animals. Originally these
stalls would have been erected for the day and taken down,
under the close supervision of the bishop’s bailiff, at the
end of the day. John Stow in his Survey of London, 1598,
describes this: ‘In old Fish Street the houses, now
possessed by fishmongers, were at the first but moveable
boards (or stalls), set out on market days, to show their
fish to be sold; but, procuring licence to set up sheds,
they grow to shops, and by little and little to tall
houses, of three or four stories in height, and now are
called Fish Street’. This market encroachment, as it is
called, is still to be seen in many of our market towns.
In Ledbury, even by 1288 the temporary stalls and booths
were giving way to permanent structures, rents for for five
shambles (slaughterhouses) and fourteen seldae macetarie
(butchers’ stalls) being paid to the Bishop. This
represents the origins of the Butcher’s Row a narrow row of
shops running north-south along the High Street. With the
rapid growth that took place after 1120 the High Street
(known as Middletown) was no longer large enough to cope
with the requirements of expanding markets and annual
fairs. In the middle ages it was common for one or more of
the major roads, either within or just outside the walls or
borough limits, to be used as overflow market areas. In
Ledbury, Bye Street became a secondary market
area.
In the early 16th
century
there is evidence for decline in the prosperity of the
market and a number of the properties in the market place
were vacant. Matters improved later in the century and
in 1584 Queen Elizabeth graned a new charter, allowing a
weekly market on Tuesday and two fairs, on the feasts of
St. Philip and James (1 May) and St. Barnabas (11
June). In 1617 a group of local citizens bought some
property ‘at or near a place called the Corner End’ and
here built the new market House [link to Market House
item]. After more than 600 years the market encroachment
had gone and the market place was, apart from the Market
Hall, an open space, as it had been when first laid out in
the 1120s. 2
In 1741 Badesdale and Toms’ map of Herefordshire listed all
the market towns and the days of their fairs and markets.
Market day in Ledbury was on a Tuesday, with fairs on May
1st
(St.
Philip & St James), June 11th
(St.
Barnabas), 21 September (St. Matthew), the Monday before
St. Luke (18 October) and the Monday before St Thomas (21
December). In the 1870s, a weekly market was held on
Tuesday; a great market, on the last Tuesday of every
month; and fairs, on the Tuesday before Easter, the second
Tuesday of May, the third Tuesday of June, the second
Tuesday of August, the first Tuesday of October, and the
Tuesday before 21 December. The old manufacture of
broadcloth, gloves, sacking, and ropes had declined, and
trade was chiefly connected with agriculture, including
malting, tanning, and trading of hops, cider, and perry.
The Easter and October fairs in the 18th
and
early 19th
C. were
renowned for their cheese, with the prices reached being
recorded in the Bath Chronicle. 3
A purpose-built cattle market was built to the west of the
High Street in 1887. Market Street opened off Bye Street,
very close to the Ledbury Town Halt on the Gloucester to
Hereford railway line. Although the sales now took place
‘off street’ many beasts were still driven through the town
to market.
'Market day used to always be a Tuesday, livestock market,
and nobody ever made an appointment but they would expect
to see someone, preferably the boss, whatever happened. So
Tuesday was always a very busy day in the office. Nowadays
people ring up and make appointments weeks ahead but that
didn't happen then. Market day was always a busy day,
because the other thing was that a lot of the livestock
used to be driven down the road. We had to keep our gates
closed. You'd get a flock of sheep in here or something.
And of course a lot of the stock used to come by train in
those days, before the war. If you look at the right, just
under the railway bridge - I don't know whether you can
still see but there used to be a siding there where they'd
back the cattle wagons in, and the cattle used to come
bounding down there and then they'd drive them loose down
to the cattle market. If you'd got the gates open
here you'd have half a dozen bullocks in the
garden! The Feathers, The Talbot, The Ring of Bells
and The Brewery, they all had what they called a market day
extension until 4 o'clock in the
afternoon. 4
'Saturdays and Tuesdays were the main shopping days in
Ledbury. Always busy on market day, Tuesday. Farmers' wives
accompanied their husbands to town to do their weekly shop
and most did their workers and workers' wives' shop too.
The other heavy shopping day was Saturday. Before working
hours per week were radically reduced, the only shopping
day for workers was Saturday and for some, only Saturday
afternoons.Oliver Howe ran a private bus company, which
served the country areas on Saturdays and Tuesdays. Their
rear-loading Morris commercial small coach parked outside
the Seven Stars. Arrival and departure times when the
passengers were good and ready. The driver was the ever
amicable Mr Davies.'5
'There were no stated hours for opening or closing shops
and early closing day was unheard of. On market days sheep
were penned in High Street, near St. Katherine’s Chapel,
and the cattle in the Homend; pigs were penned opposite
“Seven Stars”. Posts and rails were fixed to keep cattle
from shop windows. Most shops were approached by steps.
Horse dealers did a big trade outside “The Feathers”, the
horses being trotted up and down High Street; they were
also sold in Union Lane [Orchard Lane in 2008] then called
Horsefair Lane. On fair days (Mops) it was a common sight
to see women and girls on the east side of High Street and
the men and youths on the opposite side waiting to be
hired. Some farm hands wore a length of plaited whipcord in
their hats and those who preferred jobs as cowmen displayed
a whisp of horsehair, they wore smock frocks and corduroy
trousers/breeches.’6
In Grace Before Ploughing, John Masefield's memories of his
childhood in Ledbury, he describes events in the market
place and the great impression they made on him as a small
boy. Other poems, such as The Widow in the Bye Street and
The Everlasting Mercy, also contain descriptions of the
October hiring fair and the Ledbury market scene, and evoke
the extreme suffering of people living in poverty at the
time.
As a child John Masefield watched animals and wares being
brought into the market place: ‘...the timber-carters were
fine, hearty fellows, who made a point of entering the
market place with a cracking of whips....The men made a
practice of walking beside their teams as they entered the
market place, and as warnings to those in the main street
they cracked their whips with a skill and noise that
encouraged their teams... and the horses responding to the
cheer, with their great souls greatly exhorted and the
great trees brought round the bend.’
He also describes vividly the great yearly marvel called
the October Fair: ‘...It was a hiring fair, where men
sought employment for the coming year, and the broad main
street was glad with the sports of the fair: swings,
merry-go-rounds, and coconut shies. It was busy also with
the work of the fair: the sale of beasts of many kinds,
which came there looking their smartest, to be judged and
tried, in pens in the crowded street in the tumult of noise
that made the fair so wonderful. The sideshows ...kept to
the west side; the pens of the beasts were east from there.
In any clear space men tried the paces of the horses for
sale. Under the market building, and in a paven space just
south from it, there were egg and cheese and butter
sellers, and the cheap-jacks, with their patter, and their
piles of crockery. In the road.... men placed wonderful
painted zinnias and wooden sticks...By daylight the town
began to fill up with those who had come for the fair.’
He describes how people came from far and wide, and the
traditional trading of insults between the English and the
Welsh. ‘To a little boy, the aspect of the Market Place was
one of entrancing interest, noise and glad excitement.
There was a mingling of rude music, song and cries of
cheer; cheap-jacks were calling their goods, raising loud
laughter, or smashing plates when bidders would not bargain
for them. Mechanical music came from the merry-go-rounds,
and from mouth-organs played by those in the swings. All
those who had goods to sell spoke in their wares' praise.
All the beasts and fowls from local farms, brought there
for sale, added their cries and calls. Horses were being
tried for short distances; pigs and sheep were complaining
in their pens; and men were praising their wares or their
beasts at the tops of their voices....Usually, too, there
were mummers, in their traditional costume....Various
amusements started when the business had ended: a boxing
booth would open for the young men eager to try their
skill; others would be tempted to show their strength, by
hitting a pestle with a mallet. This was ever a favourite
sport with the young men. They would be tempted to have
three shies for a penny at Aunt Sally, and...every time you
hit you would get a good cigar.’ 7"
1 Oral history interviewee, England’s Past for Everyone
2 Ledbury A Medieval Borough, Joe Hillaby, Logaston Press
1997
3 Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72), John
Marius Wilson
4 Oral history interviewee, Bill Masefield
5 Ledbury shopping in the 1930s: Pip Powell in the Ledbury
Portal 2007
6 Recollections of Ledbury, G. Wargent, 1905, 34-5 (Writing
of the period c 1830 )
7 Grace Before Ploughing, John Masefield, William Heinemann
Ltd, 1966
General: Volume V16, Page 359 of the 1911 Encyclopedia
Britannica
