336 Tradesman and Merchant — Commercial Population 



'Chepe' or 'Westchepe' (Cheapside), and Cornhill . , . the 

 sellers of bread, cheese, poultry, fruit, hides, woolfels, onions, garlic 

 and other small wares, stood in the main road, between the kennels; 

 while in others again, as at Graschirche, and before the Convent of 

 the Friars Minors, at Newgate, the extensive pavements, . . . 

 seem to have been appropriated to the sellers. In other markets, 

 stalls were permanently erected for their convenience, as at the market 

 of St. Nicholas Flesh Shambles, for butchers, . . . and ' Stokkes' 

 Market on the site of the present Mansion House: the stalls in which 

 were appropriated to the fishmongers on fish days, and to the butchers 

 on flesh days."^ There were no night markets "by reason of (the) 

 . . . great peril of felonies, as well as other trespasses, may in 

 process of time in divers ways arise. "- 



For the marketing of cloth halls were more necessary to protect the 

 ware against the weather. Early in each town's industrial career 

 there was erected a cloth-hall. Colchester had its "Dutch Bay 

 Hall;"3 Ipswich its "Motehall;" Witney its "Blanket Hall;" London 

 its " Blackwell Hall ;" Halifax its " Cloth Hall ;" etc. Oswestry had no 

 special hall and the trade in Welsh webbings was confined to one or 

 two streets, the inconvenience of which method was expressed by a 

 writer who complained that the goods had to be sought "in any gar- 

 ret, stable, parlour, or kitchen."^ In the latter half of the eighteenth 

 century cloth-halls were erected in the north district at Bradford, 

 1773; "Piece Hall," Colne, 1775; "Tanney Hall," Wakefield, 1776; 

 "Manufacturers' Hall," Halifax, 1779.^ The Halifax "Manufacturers' 

 Hall" is representative. It consisted of 315 rooms, in three stories, 

 built on three sides of a square. About five-sixths of these rooms 

 were tenanted by Halifax burgesses and the rest by traders from the 

 neighboring towns of West Riding. 



These halls and the exchanges therein were under a severe disci- 

 pHne. The very early systems of regulation agree quite exactly with 

 those of the eighteenth century." It was ordered at Ipswich that all 

 fullers and clothiers of that town and country should market their 

 goods at Motehall all on market days on pain of forfeiting every cloth 

 sold outside. At Shrewsbury purchase of undressed cloth was lim- 



iLib. Alb., I, XLV. 



2 Lib. Cust., XCIX. 



3 V. C. H., Essex, II, 388. 



* Plymley, Agric. of Shrops, 334. 

 5 V. C. H., York, II, 419. 



8 Cf. those of Colchester, 1373, V. C. H., Essex, II, 383, and of Ipswich 1447, 

 V. C. H., Suff., II, 256, and of Halifax, 1779, V. C. H., York, II, 420. 



