Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskEven in its half-repaired state, Derby Market Hall is spectacular. It has a vast roof of glass and wood, with iron supports. It looks a little like St Pancras Station in London, which is not a surprise—the engineer Rowland Mason Ordish worked on both. Derby Council proudly expresses the comparison the other way around. St Pancras, it says, “has a comparable splendour to the roof of Derby Market Hall”.
Market halls were one weapon in the 19th-century campaign against street traders. People who hawked food from carts and baskets were accused of obstructing traffic, cheating shoppers and creating noise and disorder. They were a “crying evil”, as the burghers of Bolton put it. The traders were swept from the streets and into covered halls, where intense competition would in theory keep prices low. Few halls were built in London or south-east England.
By the early 20th century attracting customers, unduly or otherwise, was becoming harder. Indoor markets faced stiff competition from department stores, then from supermarkets. Slum-clearance projects denuded city centres of inhabitants. Derby’s planners decided that what the place really needed was an inner ring road that severed the city centre from residential districts.
Sarah Wilson, who manages the Gentleman Fishmonger stall in Doncaster, remembers the market being packed with shoppers in the 1970s. Now many of the traders are ageing, along with their customers. Few show much interest in social media, in home delivery or in long hours: “Go to the butchers at two o’clock and all the shutters are down,” she says. The market seems stuck in time, selling old-fashioned foods such as pork pies, Scotch eggs and tripe.
Where is this Looks like Shrewsbury
The hallmark of contemporary British culture has always been comedy, reiterating cult favourites like Red Dwarf or Hitchhikers. Forwarding the recipe for the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster described in the Hitchhikers original as an bourbon with cola with an twist of lemon.
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Source: Evening Standard - 🏆 92. / 53 Read more »