Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire Through Time
During the 16th and 17th centuries, merchants not only needed corporate space to carry on business, but also sought to express civic pride in building impressive new market halls, town halls and guild halls. Wealthy merchants and tradesmen were starting to vie for power with the local gentry. A large percentage of town councillors and aldermen came from this class. They took pride in their new-found powers, which was reflected in the civic buildings they commissioned. These market halls were usually built or rebuilt in the already existing medieval market places. The Historic Environment Record database lists thirteen medieval market places.
Herefordshire is fortunate in having several beautiful market halls, although the Market Hall in Hereford's High Town, which appears to have been a most beautiful building, has been taken down. According to Nikolaus Pevsner (in his The Buildings of England: Herefordshire, p.180), the Old Town Hall was "a sight to thrill any visitor from England or abroad. It was the most fantastic black and white building imaginable, three-storeyed, with gables and the richest, most curious decoration."
The Market Hall was supported by twenty-seven timber columns arranged in three rows of nine. It was 84 feet long and 34 feet wide, and crowned by a lantern which was over 100 feet high. It has been said that it was the largest building of its kind in Britain.The first floor was used for magistrates' chambers and the assize court, while the second floor provided chambers for fourteen craft guilds: bakers; barbers; barber surgeons; braziers; butchers; clothiers; coopers; cordwainers; glovers; joiners; mercers; tanners; tylers; and weavers. The open space between the pillars was used for the market place.
The Market Hall was built at the end of the 16th century in the centre of High Town. The upper storey was removed in 1792 to ease the pressure on the timber pillars. At this time it was also covered in the plasterwork then considered fashionable. The Market Hall was part of a row of buildings call the Butchers' Row. The entire building was taken down in 1862, as were all the other buildings in Butchers' Row, with the exception of the Old House, to allow traffic to flow more easily and because they were considered a public nuisance in that cattle was still slaughtered there. You can find an information board in the centre of the now pedestrianised area across from the Butter Market. The paving stones are designed to show where the Market Hall would have originally stood. Now the Old House is the only remaining building of Butchers' Row.
The two quarter-jacks which originally stood on the east front of the Market Hall, on either side of the clock, are now in the collections of Hereford Museum. They were rotated to strike the bells every quarter hour, hence the name quarter-jacks. The origin of these figures is unknown and it is not clear how the mechanism worked. The bells were cast in 1710 by Isaac Hadley, bell-founder of Leominster.
This market hall, unusually for town halls in Herefordshire, was built of sandstone in the early 1650s. To make way for this building and to widen the market area, the high cross, the old booth-hall and several tenements were demolished. The upper storey is supported by stone arches and was accessed by an external staircase, which was replaced with an internal oak one in 1690. The upper room was used as a courtroom by manor officials. The ground floor is open and to this day is used for weekly markets. At the east gable there is a medallion of Charles II, who is thought to have once visited Ross during the civil war. The cupola with the four clock faces is an early 18th century structure.
This pretty timber-framed market hall was built by John Abel in 1633, at the junction of High Street and Broad Street. After the Civil War, John Abel was given the honorary title "King's Carpenter" by King Charles II for his efforts in helping the citizens of Hereford when they were besieged by the Scottish army. He had supposedly devised hand mills for gun powder and corn after the powder mill was destroyed in a bombardment. John Abel was responsible for much timber-framed building work in the county, such as Ledbury Market Hall and Weobley School House.
The second storey, which was richly decorated, is supported by twelve oak columns. The building was financed by the local gentry, who decorated parts of the building with shields bearing their respective arms. These, however, do not survive. Busts of men and bare-bosomed women and inscriptions added to the ornamentation.
In 1750-51 the market hall was refurbished for the use as a town hall and court. In 1790-92, the weight of the roof was lessened by the removal of the dormer windows and by replacing the stone tiles with slates. The pillars were reinforced with stone as it was felt that the building was unsafe.
You can still see the market hall today, albeit in a different location. The Leominster Market and Fairs Act of 1853 gave permission for the building to be taken down. In 1858 it was re-erected by Mr. Arkwright of Hampton Court at Grange Court in Leominster as a dwelling house, after it had languished in a builder's yard. The open ground floor was closed in and a wing built at the back.
This timber-framed building, which has been dated by dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) to c.1520, is not actually a market hall, but merely a covered market, albeit a very picturesque one. Eight oak pillars support a roof tiled with stone slates. These pillars are supported on unworked stone bases except for one, which stands on the remains of the medieval cross base. The interior, which is open, has exposed roof beams and joists. Once a month a farmers' market is still held here.
Near the post on the south-west corner is a rough unworked stone. No-one knows the origin of this stone or its use. However, Alfred Watkins, the well-known antiquarian, has published a theory concerning this stone in his book The Old Straight Track, published in 1925. According to him, this stone is a mark stone, which in ancient times settled the place where people would gather to trade goods. He compares these mark stones to the crosses that were set up during the plague, when the market was moved away from the centre of town to an outlying place. An example he gives is Whitecross in Hereford where, as we know, the market was moved to during 1349. According to Watkins there are records of money payments being made on an open-air stone, as at Knightlow and Colwall.
Ledbury Market House, built around 1633, has been credited to John Abel. It is a two-storey timber-framed building. The lower storey is open for market trading, while the upper storey, with its attractive herringbone panelling, is supported on tapered timber posts on stone plinths. The gables are divided into square panels.
[Original author: Toria Forsyth-Moser, 2003]