Your History: A Brief History of Ludlow Market

Today, Market Square is the home of Ludlow market. But the town was planned around a huge open market place which stretched from one end of the town to the other. The area of the High Street and King Street, originally open, gradually filled up with buildings.

Market Square was the corn market; its Victorian hall was demolished in 1986. The horse fair was in Castle Square. Dairy cattle were traded at the top of Broad Street; beef cattle in the beast market (Bullring); sheep and poultry down Corve Street, and pigs in Old Street.

There was a market day each week and several during the annual fairs.Tolls were collected at the Tolsey by one of the town Bailiffs who ran the Court of Pie Powder to punish market offences. Imagine the noise, the crowding together of animals, people and carts, the smell and the filth, the blood and manure running down the streets!

In 1850 the Corporation decided to move the livestock market out of the town centre. They bought what is now Smithfield car park as the new marketplace. George Morris, an auctioneer, owned the site where Tesco is now. He set up a private livestock market there in 1885 in competition with the Corporation’s, taking advantage of the nearby station. His market forced the Corporation one out of business in 1900. It became one of the most successful livestock markets in the country.

The Portcullis Lane livestock market became difficult to accommodate in a busy town even after the building of the bypass in 1979. So McCartneys moved it to its current Ox Pasture site off the Overton Road in 1995.

Article supplied by Mike Beazley
Image: Portcullis Lane Livestock Market circa 1990.
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