The market square at this period presented a very different appearance from what it does at present. A low wooden building stood on the site of the present brick market house. The roof was originally flat and afterwards a pitched roof was added. The butchers' stalls in this old building were very convenient, perhaps more so than those in the new market house. The cellars of this building fronting on Water Street were let for the benefit of the town, and the south end was, some time after this, occupied by Mr. Alexander McLeod as a liquor store and grocery for many years. The ground in front of the market wharf and market slip was much lower than at present, and also that part of Water Street between the old City Court House and Stayner's Wharf, all which was filled up about 1830 or, perhaps, a year or two later. A range of shops under the Court House before this alteration in the streets afforded a large revenue to the town, but their value as places of business was destroyed when the street was raised, and though partially occupied afterwards, they proved damp and unfit for storage of goods. The truckmen, who were then very numerous, ranged their trucks and carts in lines in the square fronting the meat market (there being no other stand allowed) and in cold weather they might be seen, in the afternoons, when not engaged in trucking, amusing themselves with the game of football. Two liquor stores, one at the head of the market, on Beamish's Wharf, and the other at the opposite corner, now known as Laidlaw's corner, kept by Samuel and David Muirhead, were the chief places where spirits and beer were retailed to the truckmen and fishermen. In front of these shops were ranges of apple and cake stalls kept by old women, where also gull eggs and lobsters boiled hard could be had by the fishermen and shallop men from the wharves. The red woollen night cap was generally worn in those days by the market fishermen and the people from the coasting vessels.