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Markets and fairs
Created 21 June, 2008
All market regulations appear only in the Geddings court rolls. From these we can form a picture of the manner and conditions under which the market business was carried on in olden days. Our fancy may portray to us a motley throng of maltsters, fishmongers, tanners, farmers, and country people generally; the ground unpaved and undrained, littered with all kinds of rubbish and garbage, stray pigs and cattle hindering traffic which endeavoured to pass between the narrow passages left by the stalls. That this is no fiction may be seen by two quaintly worded orders, one dated 1592 and the other two years later. These run thus: "Wee payne all offendors for anoying our market with hogges and that they keep them in from ten of the clocke in the morning untill two of the clocke in the afternoon in payne of everye hodge so taken 4d."
The other ran "That all who suffer their hogges to go abroade in the streets upon the market dayes betwene nyne of the clocke in the mornings and three of the clocke in the after noone to forfeit for every hogge 4d." Another complaint in the same rolls reads: " Note that the loders bringing malt and other grain and corn to the market of Hoddesdon do sute the same corn into shops hired by them in the town, and do not bring the same to open market to be sold, but do sell the same privately in the shops, both to the hindrance of the subjects and also to the hindrance and decay of the toll due to the lord." This seems to rather anticipate present-day "Black Market'' activities.
As, in later days, complaints were made that the coming of the railway was taking traffic off the roads, so in 1596 we find that there was much complaint by the inhabitants of the town, that by the improved navigation of the Lee (Lea) more malt was being carried past the town by barge, and dismal presentments were made from time to time respecting the "decay" of the town. It is however true that from about this time we begin to find fewer records relating to the market, and there is no doubt that a slow process of decay did set in, until somewhere towards the middle of the last century, by which time it had dwindled away to a few old women's stalls and thus flickered out. The cattle market started by Mr. Bridgman in 1886, when the market day was changed to a Wednesday, was not a revival of the old market, though he had a yearly tenancy of the rights. After Mr. Bridgman's death it was continued by his son and after his death by the latter's successor in business, Mr. Blanchflower. This market was held further south than the old one, in the wide part of the street opposite Messrs. Gardiner's and the neighbouring shops.
After the Great War of 1914 to 1918 one or two stalls began to be put up in front of the Clock Tower from which goods were sold on market days. When these began to increase it led to a petition being presented to the Urban District Council by the local Traders' Association: asking that the Council should take control of these stalls and if possible give the local trader first chance against these outsiders. Then for some time a number of local tradesmen started to sell from stalls but, generally speaking, did not find them a success, and so the market day trading was again more or less left to the outsiders. Finally the Council entered into negotiations with the Marquess of Salisbury for the acquisition of the market rights, which ended in that body purchasing them in 1922. They are now vested in the Broxbourne Borough Council. Of recent years there has been a large increase in the number of these stalls. On market day they do undoubtedly bring in many people from the outlying villages; these people do not do all their shopping at the stalls, and they must help trade in the town. Also, to some extent the rates benefit from the rents derived from the stalls.
The fair of the Middle Ages was a totally different thing from its counterpart of to-day. For many centuries it was the main channel for commercial intercourse, where distribution and exchange took place in periodical gatherings and not in permanent centres. In their first beginning they appear as a religious rather than a commercial institution, their very name suggesting this, for it is derived from the Latin feria, meaning feast or holiday, and they were almost invariably held on some saint's day. Indeed, it has been said by one writer "there is no festival without a fair? no fair without a festival." These periodical gatherings, attracting a concourse of strangers from distant parts, offered an opportunity for the exchange of products, and thus became the natural centre for commercial dealings. Here merchants were always assured of buyers in an age when population was scattered and seldom concentrated in large groups, like the towns and cities of to-day.
Their development was greatly facilitated by the protection given to them and to those who frequented them by the state and the all-powerful Church. The market cross thus became the symbol and emblem of the peace of commercial intercourse in a world where battle and strife were of everyday occurrence.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries fairs began to decline in importance through their inability to meet the needs of the population and through the growth of business in towns.
Largely for these reasons they changed from their original purpose to that of pleasure-as we know them to-day, with their sideshows, roundabouts, and other things to attract the people. Our fair was no exception to the general rule, and after its date had been changed to June 29th by the charter of Queen Elizabeth, it slowly altered its character. Those of you who are familiar with Tom Brown's Schooldays will recall the writer's vivid description of the fair in the Vale of the White Horse to which Tom was taken in his boyhood days by old Benjy. This description might have been applied almost equally well to ours, for in the earlier part of the nineteenth century one would have found the same collection of stalls, ginger- bread sellers, sideshows, etc., as were portrayed in that book. In fact, looking through some of the late Mr. E. W. Lock's papers (the author) came across an interesting account of Hoddesdon Fair at about that time. It says: "Stretching along the market place could be seen a double row of gingerbread stalls, well stocked and attended, the well-known names of Coxshall, Stevens, and Hubbard being among the numbering." It then goes on to describe the numerous sideshows and so on that provided entertainment and amusement for the people. It still continued to be held in the High Street until the last decade of the nineteenth century when the noise and the crowds around the stalls, booths, and so on became a nuisance. This caused it to be removed, first to a field in Amwell Street and from there to Pound Close, where it has ever since been held.