Cities and towns -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- History, Local; Great Britain -- Social conditions; Villages -- Great Britain
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)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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