Quiet Moment: Hitchin Market
Hitchin Market is currently open on Tuesday and Saturday with a wide range of stalls from fruit and vegetables to carpets, clothes and household implements. Friday sees an antique market taking over the stalls.
The weekly market at Hitchin seems to have been held on a Tuesday from time immemorial. With the passage of time the stalls, which had been set up for trading in the broad and lengthy main street, running from Silver Street to Tilehouse Street, began to take on a more permanent character. The stallholders no longer removed their stalls after the market was over.
Some even began to both work and live at their stalls; others converted the ground floors of their existing houses into primitive shops. Not only were the market streets built over, but also the spaces between the earlier houses were also filled in to give a continuous line of stalls or shops facing towards the street.
By the end of the 14th century very little remained of Hitchin’s original single main street: in 1470 there is evidence of continuous tenure of at least two stalls in the town which even then had been leased for 40 years.
Quiet Moment: Hitchin Market
Hitchin Market is currently open on Tuesday and Saturday with a wide range of stalls from fruit and vegetables to carpets, clothes and household implements. Friday sees an antique market taking over the stalls.
The weekly market at Hitchin seems to have been held on a Tuesday from time immemorial. With the passage of time the stalls, which had been set up for trading in the broad and lengthy main street, running from Silver Street to Tilehouse Street, began to take on a more permanent character. The stallholders no longer removed their stalls after the market was over.
Some even began to both work and live at their stalls; others converted the ground floors of their existing houses into primitive shops. Not only were the market streets built over, but also the spaces between the earlier houses were also filled in to give a continuous line of stalls or shops facing towards the street.
By the end of the 14th century very little remained of Hitchin’s original single main street: in 1470 there is evidence of continuous tenure of at least two stalls in the town which even then had been leased for 40 years.