St Albans Market


St Albans Market is an outdoor street market in the cathedral city and market town of St Albans. The market runs from Market Place North-East up St Peter's Street to the junction with Catherine Street—for a length of —and is managed by St Albans City & District Council.
Following the closure of Canterbury Market in 2022, St Albans is England’s second oldest market after York’s Shambles Market as well as the oldest English street market and the oldest market in England that is still held on its original site. In 2024 St Albans Market was awarded the title Best Large Outdoor Market by the National Association of British Market Authorities.

History

Beginnings and the medieval market

, the sixth abbot of St Albans Abbey founded St Albans Market in to generate income for the Abbey and to form the centre of a new town. Market Place is next to the Waxhouse Gate entrance to the abbey and it is possible that the market had already formed around this gate before coming under the control of the abbey. The market was managed on behalf of the abbey by a clerk of the market.
In the time of Abbot Geoffrey de Gorham the income from the tolls and the market dues are given as £11-14-0.
Henry II of England confirmed the Abbey's control of "the town of St Albans with the market place and every liberty a borough ought to have." There was further confirmation of the abbey's market rights by Richard I in 1198.
The market was divided into areas where traders of similar commodities all competed for customers. The known areas are the:
  • Fleshambles for meat,
  • Fish shambles for fish,
  • Malt cheping,
  • Wheat cheping,
  • Leather shambles,
  • Pudding shambles,
  • Wool market, and
  • Cordwainers Row.
By 1287, at the latest, market days had become established as Wednesday and Saturday as they still were in the twenty-first century.
By this time, the abbey had also founded markets at Codicote, High Barnet, and Watford. Of these, High Barnet and Watford markets are still trading.
In the early 1290s an Eleanor cross was erected at the southern end of Market Place between the market and the entrance to the abbey.
The Moot Hall was the building in which the abbot's court dealt with legal issues arising within the town and surrounding area and was also the venue for the court of piepowders which dealt with legal issues arising on the market.
In the summer of 1297 John of Berkhamsted found himself on the wrong side of the bench when the inhabitants of St Albans made a complaint to Edward I and the abbot was found guilty of weights and measures offences concerning bread and ale. For a few weeks the market fell under royal control before being returned to the abbey. Edward reconfirmed the abbey's market rights in 1301. In the 1334 subsidy roll, the market was valued at £265-3-8 for the purposes of taxation.
In the thirteenth century, many of the stalls gave way to permanent building and shops and by 1355 large parts of Market Place had been built over. In the earlier part of the thirteenth century, fees are recorded for stalls in the Market Place but in the next century the term shops supersedes that of stalls.

Early modern period and the end of the abbey

By at least 1519 the abbey was leasing out the collection of the market rents. The first known lessee being John Gelly with a lease of thirty-one years.

A royal market

As part of the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII closed the Abbey in 1539 and took possession of the market, it remained crown property for the next fourteen years. The holder of the lease for market rents at that time was a Raynold Carte, who held it at an annual rent of £13-6-0. For an unstated offence he was placed in the pillory on a market day in 1541 from one hour before the market opened until an hour after the market closed.

The town takes control

In 1553, Henry’s son Edward VI sold the right to hold the market on Wednesdays and Saturdays as well as three fairs on:
to a group of local merchants and landowners. The letters patent which recorded this sale also incorporated St Albans as a borough.
The new mayor acted as clerk of the market overseeing the setting of prices, the accuracy of weights and measures, and presided over the court of piepowders.
Following the restoration, St Albans received a charter in 1664 affirming the town's right to "hold markets and fairs as well in the waste and open streets and places... as elsewhere" and to "erect shambles and stalls and there buy, sell and expose to sale, wares, merchandise, corn, grain, cattle, horses and other saleable things... and take and levy tolls, stallage, and other profits of saleable things".
As had the abbey and the crown in the preceding century, in the seventeenth century the corporation leased out the rents of the fairs and markets to bailiffs who paid a fixed rent. At between £40 and £80, in the second half of the century, this was the largest single source of revenue for the corporation.
The town took measures to protect the market income passing a resolution in 1699 threatening prosecution for anyone selling grain "and other things" without paying market tolls. In 1702 the prohibited the selling of corn before 10:00 and only if tolls had been paid on corn grown outside the Borough.
In 1702 the remaining stump of the Eleanor Cross was demolished and in the following year the corporation ordered that a market cross "be built and set upon the waste ground where the old Cross lately stood near to the Clock House." The cross erected in 1703 was an octagonal building with a roof supported upon eight columns above which was the figure of Justice, and within it was the town pump worked by a large wheel.

Closure of the Wednesday market

In the early eighteenth century the Wednesday market ceased trading.
In 1720 the town attempted to prevent the forestalling of "poultry or other goods". Nine years late a market bell was installed in the market house to announce the opening of the market to traders who were not freemen of the town. Only freemen of the town were allowed to trade before the ringing of the bell, which was rung at 10:00 in the market house, The bell was used until 1835.
The eighteenth century saw a decline in the number of markets in England with Shefford and Toddington in neighbouring Bedfordshire disappearing completely. The annual revenue from the markets reached £326 in 1709–10, then dropped to around £100 in the mid-1730s, and then further dropped to £59 around 1750. The corn market is described as being the first market for corn in England at the beginning of the century but no longer holding that title by the 1750s. Despite the decline in revenue and reputation, the fact that St Albans remained at the centre of a transport hub meant it could still be described as "one of the greatest in England".
The end of the century saw the addition of a plait market on Saturdays. In the 1790s the Lady Day and Old Michaelmas fairs are described as well attended and markets at which clothes and toys were traded. The statute fair for hiring farm servants, held at New Michaelmas is described as "sometimes but thinly attended" because of competing fairs held earlier in the year.

Industrial Revolution and wholesale market

By the early nineteenth century the St Albans Turnpike Trust reported that in the year from June 1808 alone, over 45,000 carts and carriages and 260,000 market-bound animals were recorded at the local tollgates.
The Market Cross was taken down in 1810, but the pump remained.
The use of market places for humiliating public punishments continued into the mid-nineteenth century. At the Midsummer court sessions of 1812 a man was convicted of unnatural assault, a euphemism used then for same-sex sexual activity. He was imprisoned for twelve months, but also condemned to the pillory, on a market day, in St Albans for one hour before noon. At this point the use of the pillory seems to have gone out of fashion as one had to be borrowed from Hertford. This was the last use of the pillory in Hertfordshire.
By 1815 the plait market was being described by Shaw as "one of the largest in England".
A new town hall and courthouse was built on the site of the old Moot Hall in 1830. The town hall opened directly onto the market enabling the stalls to reach into the building.
In 1841 Queen Victoria passed through St Albans on her way to and from Panshanger country house on a Thursday and a Saturday. In her journal she recorded of the Saturday that "It being market day the town was still more crowded than the other day and we again met with a very kind reception.".
The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 greatly increased the opportunities for trading grains. The existing grain market—where grain was sold retail to householders, and wholesale to millers, bakers and other traders—consisted of a roof supported on posts and open on all sides to the elements. In 1857 this building was replaced with a new Corn Exchange that still stands today.
In 1872 the town pump was replaced by a drinking fountain.
In 1888 a commissioner arrived in St Albans gathering evidence for the Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls. According to a newspaper report of the time, the market was stated as taking place between the Clock Tower and opposite the White Horse pub.
Fees varied as to whether someone was a local property tax payer and depending on what commodities they sold:
The then market manager, Mr Pointon, was privately letting out stall equipment to the same traders that he was renting pitches to on behalf of the city.
It was shown that whilst there was demand for a covered market in the fashion of other market towns, the city had not the resources to build one: "We have done the sewerage and the cemetery and many other local improvements. The Council does not possess any land suitable for a covered market."
The report also found that none of the annual fairs were still taking place.