One of the pleasantest sights, to a Londoner at any rate, is the market-place of an old-fashioned country town on a market-day. In many such towns the weekly market is held, in the open air, in the same place where it has been held for centuries. Probably none of the houses round the market-square is as old as the market, but the buildings, altered and rebuilt as they have been, take us back several centuries, and speak of days long gone by.

A good many towns have built covered markets. Some of them are near the old market-place, but in other cases the market is now held in quite another part of the town. Cattle-markets, which used to be held in the open street in a busy thoroughfare, are now often held in places more suitable for that purpose some distance away from their old quarters.

Corn-markets are held in most market-towns, frequently on the same day as the general market, and many towns now boast a corn-exchange. Then, too, in some places there are markets held in connection with the chief trade of the neighbourhood.

The market-house is often a curious building. You may almost speak of it as "a big room on legs". There is a large room standing on stone or wooden arches. The open space underneath serves to shelter some of the market-stalls, and a staircase leads up from the street to the room above, where the town council holds its meetings. On the roof of this building is a turret containing a clock, and perhaps a fire-bell and a market-bell. There is such a quaint old market-house still standing at Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, but so many of these old buildings have been pulled down to make way for larger structures, in which the town can carry on its business, and where the various officers can have their offices, that the town hall is mostly now a smart modern building.

The stalls set up on the market-day are of the same simple kind as those which have been used for centuries. It is curious to notice how the different trades keep to different parts of the market-place—butchers in one place, greengrocers in another, and fishmongers in another. Just as the trades had their special quarters in the town, so they had in the market. Things have altogether changed as far as the shops are concerned, but the setting out of the market is almost exactly the same to-day as it was five hundred years ago.

The market cross still remains in some towns, but the cross itself has in many cases disappeared long ago. In some places the steps and the lower part of the cross still remain, but there is a kind of open shed built round it to form a shelter. Some of these shelters are very ornamental, like those at Chichester and Winchester.[17] It is not an uncommon thing for such a cross as that to be called the Butter Cross,[18] from the fact that around the cross was held the butter-market. Some of these shelters are quaint rather than beautiful, and cover the town pump, which is now carefully locked up. In some places a drinking-fountain stands where once the cross stood. At the cross a good deal of business was done. The mayor or his officers would read out public notices there on the market-day, that everybody might hear. Not far from the cross was the cage, where folk who had been "taken up" were set for a time. The stocks, the pillory, and the whipping-post, in the seventeenth century, were usually here in the market-place, not far from the cross.

There is much to see in a market-place on a market-day. If the market-day is Saturday, you will find the place thronged with people, especially at night; and even quite small towns are then so crowded that you wonder where the people come from.

Fairs, in the Middle Ages, provided for much of the wholesale trade of the country, and markets for the retail trade. The two were very much alike, and the rights to hold an annual fair and a weekly market mostly went together.

Some places had, and still have, more than one market a week. In many places the market has quite died out now, but in the early days one of the first steps of a "tun" towards becoming a "town" was to obtain the right to hold a market. There are many of our modern towns which have grown up in manufacturing districts, near great railway centres, or near docks and railway stations, which have no market. Nearly all of our old towns have, or at one time had, the right of holding markets.

Nobody can set up a stall in a market as he pleases. On the market-day you will see the beadle going about from stall to stall taking the toll from each stall-holder. In many cases he wears an old-fashioned dress trimmed with gold lace. He reminds us of the time when no one except a freeman of the town could trade freely. The stall-holders were "foreigners", and had to pay to the town a toll for permission to sell in the town. In our day you can go and settle in any town you please, and open a shop just as you like, but you cannot so easily take a stall and sell in the market: you must pay the market toll even now. Such tolls go towards the expenses of the town.

In the market the town and the country meet. In these days, when the produce of the country can be quickly sent into the heart of the largest town, the country provision-markets are not of as much importance as they once were, but they are very useful and very popular still.

There are many places where the market beadle rings a hand-bell, or a bell in the clock-tower, to give notice of the opening and closing of the market. In former days, if a man dared to sell anything before the bell was rung in the morning, or after it had rung in the evening, he was very severely punished. Even now, goods may not be sold in the market before or after the regular market hours.

There were proper town officers appointed by the mayor and corporation to look after the markets, and to see that goods were sold at the proper market price, and that there was no cheating in weight and measure, and in the quality of the goods sold.