Video: Is it time to tear down Leeds Market?

Back in the 1950s, they had some strange ways of looking after children. Liz Laughton’s family owned the fish stall, R.Bethell, on Kirkgate Market in Leeds, and when her parents needed to work they took her down there ‘to play with the eels’.

“They’d flood the bottom of the walk-in fridge and put the live eels in,” she says. “And then they’d put me in.” Liz would play all day, or watch the world go by, perched on a bag of whelks.

These days she works with her son, the fourth generation of the family to run the stall.

“I love the diversity”, she tells me. “We supply the top restaurants in Leeds, and at the same time I can’t count the number of nationalities who come to buy the fish. When I began the market was very white, very English and we stocked about ten lines. Now it’s far more interesting.”

Further down the hall, Michelle Hochen and her husband Cliff specialise in freshly boiled crabs, lobster and seafood. “It’s like a theatre and we’re the performers,” laughs Michelle. “ Sometimes we’re marriage guidance counsellors; sometimes social workers; sometimes we advise on care for the elderly…”

Some customers come every day. Others arrived in Britain a few weeks ago. Then there are the students, newly arrived in the city. “They come straight to the market,” says Michelle. “They want to know what’s best to buy, and they know we’ll give them honest answers.”

Even on a wet Monday morning the market is full of life, a fuggy warmth, and the unmistakable market smell of tea, bacon sandwiches and cut flowers. It’s the biggest indoor market in Europe, employing 2,000 people and even in the midst of a recession, generates a profit of £2m a year.

But all is not well. Traders are anxiously waiting for the result of a feasibility study, the latest in a series of consultations, reports, and attempts to create a ‘vision’ of the market’s future.

Earlier this year 3,000 people put forward suggestions and this week the council unveiled a list of 12 possible options for the market’s future – from demolition of the so-called temporary sheds erected 30 years ago following a fire, to using the market as a focal point for events.

It may seem like a step forward, but for many of those whose work and use the market any decision still seems a long way off.

“It’s really frustrating,” says Janet Douglas, historian of Leeds and a Friend of Kirkgate Markets, “And it’s been going on since 2008.”

Janet has been a market regular ever since she came to Leeds over 30 years ago. “I used to come here when my daughter was a baby. I’d load up the pram (much easier than carrying it in bags) and push it all home.”

These days she conducts architectural tours around the building. “The rear skyline always reminds me of Istanbul, especially at dusk,” she says. “Very romantic. But like a lot of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, it’s a mixture – Venetian domes, Art Nouveau details, Corinthian columns – all wrapped around the cast-iron and steel framework which you can see once you get into the hall.”

The market (now Grade I listed) as a whole was completed in 1904 at a cost of more than £110,000, The magnificent frontage (built in the 1850s), wasfour storeys high and incorporated 18 shops, a hotel, restaurant, billiard hall, offices and club rooms.

Chrissie Hill occupies an elegant Edwardian booth just inside one of the main entrances. Her mother, Dorothy Goodall, started the business in 1963.

“She wanted to sell top-quality hosiery, and that’s what we still do.” The Grand Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse send their performers down to Chrissie, and the big shops too, if there is something they don’t stock. “Trade is good,” she tells me. “I’ve always been happy here.”

But she’s bothered by the number of empty stalls: “Empty stalls mean jobs have gone.”

For Chrissie, Kirkgate has a purpose: “The market is for the people of Leeds to make a living.” She blames the “astronomical” rents, and Liz Laughton agrees: “That shop,” she says, pointing at a long (empty) stall 
immediately opposite, “cost £4,000 a month. Plus rates. Plus service charges. And he was selling chicken.”

But times are tough for markets everywhere. “Supermarkets are so much easier,” says Liz. “And people are lazy about quality and seasonality variety. That’s what we offer.”

That’s what keeps Janet coming. “You can buy things here that you can’t buy anywhere else, like razor clams – delicious fried with butter and herbs.”

But even she uses the market less these days. “I used to come twice a week when I worked in the city centre. But now I’m retired, I come once a fortnight.”

Even increasing “foodyism” fuelled by TV programmes is a mixed blessing. Farmers’ markets are popular, but traditional markets suffer by comparison – they seem shabby and difficult to navigate.

“The recession has taken out a lot of traders,” says Liz. “We’re losing atmosphere. The place is looking dilapidated. And the Council thinks we’re a golden goose.”

According to the traders, the Council should be investing in the market. Instead it is (still) discussing its future. “In 2008 there was a consultation exercise,” says Janet, “then there was the Scrutiny Board’s ‘Vision’. Then there was the Quarterbridge report.”

The 2011 report was hugely controversial. Quaterbridge (a consultancy specialising in markets) recommended that Kirkgate should be shrunk by 25 per cent and that the Council look for a commercial partner to manage it.

Now Norfolk Property Services has been employed to conduct a feasibility study, which will consult (again) and present a series of options to the Executive Committee in January.

Conspiracy theories are rife, not least because the whole thing is bound-up with Eastgate, a development planned for just north and 
behind the market. “Anything for John Lewis,” growls Janet, who fears that Quarterbridge’s suggestion that the open market be rehoused inside the halls is merely a way of freeing up space for a car park.

Not everyone in the market is hostile, though. Nick Copland, co-owner of The Source – a stall offering small artisan food businesses a place to trial their wares – is looking on the bright side: “A giant construction site. Just outside this door. Think how many people will need something to eat.”

Nick is dismissive of the open-air market – ‘out-of-date food, broken biscuits’ – and not over-concerned about the idea that 
the market might be leased. “Councils can’t run commercial enterprises. I think it would be fine if it was run by the right people.”

Kirkgate needs a focus, he argues: “I believe that food is the heart of the market. Let me show you how.”

He gives me directions to find Junior Cuffy, known professionally as ‘Dean’, who first trialled his wares at The Source and has just moved into a small shop at the top of Butcher’s Row.

Dean arrived in Leeds five years ago, and now he’s doing a brisk trade selling Carbbean food with a modern British twist. He would prefer to set up on the high street but can’t afford the rents, and he sees opportunities here: ‘It’s changing. It’s becoming more of a place to eat.”

Dean has plenty of suggestions, not least that the market should open until 9pm. But as you listen him it also becomes clear that, whilst on the one hand he fits easily into Nick’s vision of the market as foodie destination, on the other, his story and aspirations have just as much in common with Chrissie’s Mum.

So what is Kirkgate market – a way of life? Foodie heaven? Somewhere for the people of Leeds to make a living? The last place in Leeds where rich and poor rub shoulders? A rare remaining pubic space in an increasingly corporate city? Or just somewhere warm on a cold wet day?

Perhaps it’s all of these things. For markets are, and always have been, unruly things, and there’s always been the urge to tidy them up. But they’re also – like the smell of tea, bacon and cut flowers – homely, fragile, and strangely romantic.

Whatever the future of Kirkgate Market turns out to be, it’s worth remembering one thing now: sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.