DOWNHAM, or _Market Downham_, as it is sometimes called. {203} It is pleasantly situated on the side of a hill, and upon the Ouse, over which it has a good bridge. It had heretofore two weekly markets, Mondays and Saturdays, but that is no longer the case; the latter only are now to be considered as its proper market days, on which the town is said to be well supplied with fish and wild fowl, from the adjacent fens. Downham was formerly celebrated for its great butter market, which used to be kept near the bridge, every _Monday_, and which it seems, has before now supplied London with the immense quantity of ninety thousand firkins in a year. From its being sent by way of Cambridge, it obtained the name of Cambridge butter. These markets have been discontinued, and the butter is now taken for sale to Swaffham. It is said that the privilege of a market was granted to Downham by Edward the confessor, and that its principal manor, with the whole hundred, were given by king Edgar to Ramsey Abbey, whose abbot, as we are further informed, was authorized by King John to hold a fair here. By Henry III. he was invested with the additional authority to try and execute malefactors at his “gallows of Downham.”—Some monastic buildings, and particularly a _priory_ of Benedictine monks, stood formerly near the church.—There is in this town a small dissenting congregation, the chapel belonging to which, was erected in the early part of the last century. In 1801 the town and whole parish of Downham contained 278 houses, and 1512 inhabitants.