How we used to shop: Rare pictures of Yorkshire’s old markets

This selection of rarely-seen pictures from the archive recalls a time before pocket calculators and debit cards, when no stall was complete without an Avery scale and a set of weights to measure the loose goods scooped out of bins for thrift-conscious shoppers. Wherever they went – Otley one day, York, Settle or Knaresborough the next – the scales went too.

A close-up examination of the pictures reveals what was on offer. Dishracks and tea towels, rubber mats and small toys were the staples of the 1950s, when not everything was yet off the ration.

In the background, the signs on the pubs and shops tell their own tale of the passing parade of life on the high street. The war was not long over when some of these pictures were taken, and the years of austerity had left the facades drab and unvarnished. Marketing was a science still of the future.

Market life had been a British tradition since the middle ages. But long before that, the Romans had established trading outposts in Colchester – England’s oldest recorded market town – and Cirencester. Later, markets became so much of a community hub that the rest of the town grew around them and gave rise to their name. Market Weighton in East Yorkshire is one such community.

The English system of charters held that a new market town could not be created within a certain distance of an existing one, but with the coming of mechanised transport, the distance shrank dramatically and in industrial centres such as Calderdale, West Yorkshire, whole clusters of market towns were established to take advantage of the new railway lines. Those in Halifax, Sowerby Bridge, Hebden Bridge, and Todmorden remain to this day.

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