ROGER FROST: Burnley’s Victorian Market

One is a Valentine postcard from my collection and it shows a view of the market hall taken from Howe Street and looking west towards Curzon Street. You might be able to see the spire of St James the Great Parish Church on the extreme left. The other picture is, arguably, the more interesting. It also shows the market hall from Howe Street, but from the point at which that street is joined by Chancery Street.

Both images show some of the market stalls in place but the second picture gives us more information about what the shopping area around the market place looked like. One thing we tend to forget is that the market hall was surrounded by the market place.

The building was not actually central to the market place as there was more of the uncovered shopping area to the east of the market hall than there was to the west.

In fact, in the early part of the last century, there was a street between the market hall and Curzon Street. It was called Garden Street and was the remnant of a number of tiny streets which included Poke Street, Rodney Street and Fountain Street all of which disappeared to make way for the market hall shown in the pictures.

I say this because people are not generally aware Burnley has had, over the years, three market places and, depending on definition, four market halls. Let me explain; the first market place and market hall was in the Top o’ th’ Town area near Burnley’s Parish Church of St Peter. This situation lasted from 1294, when the right to hold a market in Burnley was established, to the latter years of the 18th Century.

At that time the market moved to what is now the junction of St James’s Street and Manchester Road. We have not got an exact date for the move, and it is likely it took a number of years but, by the 1770s, Burnley’s market was being held at what was its second location. The old name for the lower part of Manchester Road was Market Street and, in fact, the proper name for the bridge next to the present town hall is Market Street Bridge though all of you will know that, these days, the bridge carries Manchester Road.

There was a market house which worked with the open market which operated in what became known as the Old Market Place at the bottom of Manchester Road. Fishwick’s map of 1827 confirms this, as the words “market place” appear on the map at this point. When the Merryweather map of 1841 is consulted, at the same place on that map appear the words “old market place”. We can assume, therefore, that, between 1827 and 1841 the market moved.

Don’t get the idea the move was as significant as the one that had taken place in the later 18th Century. What happened was that land behind the Thorn Hotel (the land was known as Thorn Croft) was acquired by Burnley Markets Company and made into an open market. This was a direct consequence of the collapse of Holgate’s Bank in 1824. Property previously owned by families affected by the fall of the bank had to sell it to the highest bidder. The map of 1841 shows what had been Thorn Croft as the “new market place”. This area was an oddly shaped piece of ground and had permanent market stalls erected on the left bank of the Brun, from the bottom of what was Fleet Street towards the, as yet, unbuilt Standish Street.

This situation survived until the 1860s by which time Burnley Market had been acquired by one of the forerunners of Burnley Council, Burnley Improvement Commissioners. The council itself, which had been established in 1861, decided to redevelop all of the existing market area and add more land to the west of the site. It was then the market hall in the picture was built.

This building served Burnley for almost 100 years and, in that time, it was one of the most popular buildings in town. When a student I worked there, on Saturdays and at holiday times, at Lupton’s book and stationery stall. I recall the building as great to work in but, in the late 1860s, this market hall was very unceremoniously pulled down to be replaced by a temporary building, which was later converted into the now demolished market’s car park which was in Curzon Street.

I think it could be said this building was a failure both as a temporary market hall (cold, noisy and inconvenient) and a car park (badly designed and suffering from what is now called “concrete cancer”). The present market hall is a big improvement on the temporary structure but it is no match for the Victorian market hall we see in the pictures.

In fact I would go so far as to say Burnley’s 1870 market hall was one of the town’s best buildings. Those of you who read this column regularly will know I have designated Burnley to be “the town of lost spires and domes”. The 1870 market hall is one of the buildings that support this assertion as it was originally designed to have a huge spire (above the pediment you can see in the pictures) which was, unfortunately, never built.

A quick look at the photos gives us some flavour of what it was like to visit Burnley’s Victorian market hall. Most interesting to me are the children in the second picture and how the stalls are laid out. Imagine the sound as the small horse drawn cart clattered along the street, its iron wheel tyres striking the stone setts. Notice, also, the gas lamp poking through the awning on the stall and the clock on the roof of the shop in Market Street, in the background on the same photo.

How fortunate we are that images of such quality have survived in private collections like my own and in the much more extensive collections of Burnley Library.