How Norman Got His Street Market (10 November 1978)

Huge markets for the sale of general goods were a feature of many northern towns in my young day.  You could get nearly everything you wanted there.  Masses of people gathered and the clamour of the “barkers” was terrific.

Some of the characters were never to be forgotten.  There was a large, fat woman we knew as “Pot Annie”.  She stood on her stall – which did not have any roof – and always attracted a large crowd.  She had two main lines, one being chamber pots and the other being bloomers for outsize women like herself.  She would pick up one of the said pots, hold it high in one hand, bang it with the other and cry, “There you are, ladies and gents, as sound as the old parish bell”.

There was also a coloured gentleman, the first I ever saw, who promised that his medicine – which looked like, and probably was, just liquorice water – would cure every ailment you were likely to be heir to.  I don’t know how he got away with it, but he had a good line of patter, interspersed with little tunes, and a whole load of regular customer’s week after week.

HUMBUGS

Three or four of my many kinsmen stood the markets.  One of them had been employed by a firm of boiled sweets manufacturers whose claim to fame was that they were the first to put the lettering in seaside rock.  He was getting on a bit when he suddenly decided to go it alone.  He made treacle toffee, mint humbugs and the like in a shed at home, had a good pitch at the foot of the town hall steps and was never without a queue of eager buyers.  But that on just two days a week was enough for him.

Two more kinsmen who were brothers had a green-grocery round, but they made the bulk of their income from standing the markets.

After the war another kinsman continued as a navigator in the RAF.  He observed the atomic explosion on Christmas Island.  Then he left the service before his time and for a few years stood the markets with crockery obtained from the Potteries.  With this he was able to buy his house outright.  Then he applied for a job with the Qantas airline and is now “talking them down” at Melbourne airport.

WOUNDED

I was reminded of all this by the recent mention of Bletchley’s old market (as distinct from the cattle market) as having been held on land near the present Bletchley Arms.  That market was known as the Bletchley Traders Market and was started by Mr. Charles Henry Green, who was a tradesman in the town.  When he died in 1951, it was reported that he had started the market “35 years ago”, but that date would have been 1916 and he served in the first world war and was badly wounded – given six months to live – in 1917.  However, that might be, he had shops successively in Aylesbury Street and Victoria Road and finally in Bletchley Road.

Most people will remember the Bletchley Road premises, which were what I would have called two shops side by side.  A fish and chip shop was added later.  At the time of Mr. Green’s death, the premises were being run by his sons, Ron and Norman, but eventually Ron’s interests lay elsewhere.  The father’s business had been in drapery, furniture and antiques, but a café business was added, and that was how I came to have a fairly close acquaintance with Norman – as a caller for the odd cup of tea and a natter.

There was then no stall market in the town, but one day Norman told me he was thinking about starting one in the space around his shops and backing on to the cattle market.  He thought he could make a go of it, but he was concerned about the attitude of the town’s other traders.  He did not want to upset them, he said.  Did I think it would?

He probably asked others the same question.  However, I told him that as far as my observation went, any town that could call itself one had either a street market or a stall market of some kind as one of its attractions and I did not think the other traders would object to one for this town.

POSSIBILITY

In the upshot the market took some time actually arriving.  It was first discussed “as a possibility” by the Council in March 1947.  Then in May of that year, I think, the plan was put to the Council.  We were also told that it was hoped to cover-in the whole area eventually.  Either then or some months later the Council approved the plans, for in April 1948, at a meeting of the Chamber of Trade, it was moved that the Council be asked to withdraw permission.  There was quite an argument on the pros and cons, but eventually an amendment encouraging the market was carried by 17 votes to seven.

But the operation did not begin forthwith and it was not until June 1950 that Norman announced that the plans were now going ahead with the construction of 30 stalls.  Even so, it had not yet been decided whether to hold the market on one day a week (Thursday the cattle market day, no doubt) or two.  However, the decision to hold the market on Saturdays as well was not long in forthcoming and the market went ahead from there on.  Sometime later the provision of a galvanised iron market hall to the rear increased the stall accommodation tremendously and on two days a week that area of Bletchley was very busy indeed.

The market was run by a company, with Norman at the helm and Miss Laura Stevens, who was well known and much respected as secretary to the local Oddfellows, collecting the tolls.

I do not recall any further action until it became obvious that the planned redevelopment of the whole area as part of the new town meant that neither the cattle market nor the stall market could stay where they were.  The stallholders were very worried.  Some of them had stalls practically from the first day.  By this time, I knew many of them quite well and they asked me to compose a letter of inquiry and appeal to the Council.  This I did.  They signed it and received a reply from Town Manager John Smithie assuring them that their case was being kept in mind.

Eventually the move was made to some nice, bright new stalls up a side street and thence to the present accommodation, which is not so very far from where it all began well over 50 years, perhaps even 60 years ago.