That the port of Spalding had an old and active market is undoubted. I have found no reference to an early charter awarding market rights before the Norman conquest. The earliest reference to a market in Spalding therefore appears to be the Domesday Book where Spalding is recorded as having a market with an annual value of 40s. To understand the significance and the context of the town in 1086 it was in the top fifth in terms of size and is only one of five markets recorded in Lincolnshire at that time.[i]
The rights to hold a market on a Tuesday in Spalding appear to be from antiquity and it was on this basis in 1281 that Spalding Priory successfully defended its right to the Lord of the Manor of Spalding and the rights it contained, including the market rights.[ii] In 1293 the Priory of Spalding claimed a financial penalty (amercement) from Thomas son of Lambert de Multon for setting up a market at Moulton that unjustly damaged the one held in Spalding – this is despite him being granted a charter to do so by King Edward I in 1290.
Manorial rights appear to be fickle gifts at the will of the Crown. Under Henry IV the Manor of Spalding became part of the Duchy of Lancaster. Henry VIII, as was his way, snatched back the rights and leased out the manorial rights.
From the 16th century to the nineteenth the management of markets and towns in general changed little. Markets were often managed under old manorial rights. In towns or boroughs the management was by “incorporation” – effectively an institution created by charter that had certain rights and responsibilities bestowed upon it by the Crown. In addition you had charities and the church providing what little welfare there was available. The 1601 Act of Relief of the Poor put a local responsibility on parishes to attend to the needs of the poor funding this with a local tax on wealthier property owners. This could be quite difficult for poorer parishes and from 1782 you began to see Unions of parishes form where the resources for relief of the poor, including workhouses, could be pooled. Provision for the poor was a significant aspect in forming the future structure of local government. Hence you see Spalding in nineteenth and early twentieth century directories described as a “market town, seaport and a Union town”, the Union town referring it to being a Union of ten parishes. The management of any town was a hotch-potch of institutions that frequently mismanaged growth and resources and served many masters besides the common good.
Spalding possibly fared better than many towns. For example, Spalding Town Husbands, with its origins back to an endowment by Mathew Gamlyn in 1590, provided housing and alms successfully for over four hundred years with its two successive charities still functioning in 2023 thanks to a combination of local generosity and successive good management.
Town planning was, up to the 1830’s, generally very poor, with poor, inadequate and unsafe water supply, badly maintained roads, and little control over buildings and their form or quality. This saw a lack of paving, lack of drainage for the street and elemental problems caused by such things as doors to properties that opened outwards straight into the roadway. With respect to the market, the manorial rights were all too keenly used to charge stallholders and auctioneers, but little mind to the responsibility to maintain the market place, or sheep market was given. Perhaps one of the most concerning matters was the increasingly poor condition of High Bridge crossing the River Welland.
The Whig government of the 1830’s, whilst politically weak, started a process of reforming structures of government that included Royal commissioners examining all aspects of town and country in various guises throughout England. The Napoleonic Wars had taken a toll, with industrialisation, agricultural innovation, and a series of poor harvests changing the landscape. In my opinion what drove the realisation of the need for such reform was the political fear of a popular revolution of the kind France had seen. Certainly this was in the minds of the monarchy of the era and no doubt of those of wealth and power who had the most to lose.
By 1854 Spalding was run by a board of commissioners as enabled by the Spalding Improvement Act of 1853. They set to work establishing infrastructure and improving the town. Safe water supply was secured. Gas supply was established. Drainage was improved. Roads were improved and pavements added. The town started to be managed well for the benefit of many. However, the commissioners were not a popular group of people as they were seen to be raising rates and enforcing plans and actions without consultation, at least that is the impression I am given by letters to the press at the time. However, like social media is today, it is often the case that the dissatisfied minority have a voice disproportionate to their number. Some of the outrage can be seen with some amusement through today’s eyes as we see householders complaining at being forced to alter their front doors in order that the open inwards and not outwards onto the open road. The town was effectively run by a series of committees in a pragmatic, but not necessarily democratic manner.
By the 1870’s the sale of stock in Spalding had become irregular and declining, whilst that in Holbeach was thriving as seen in this comment:
“The unfortunate want of interest in our own market, and the apparent want of success in establishing a weekly auction market for stock in Spalding, cause us to turn to a neighbouring town, which has the honour of being the first in the district to establish a systematic market auction, and which to the present time has been most successful. We refer to the enterprising town of Holbeach, and out object is to congratulate the originator of the market on his restoration to health, and the inception of new interest in the connection. We refer to the introduction of Mr. Abbott into the business so long carried on by Mr. Hackworth, and we have no doubt, with the skill and experience of the one, and the education of the other, Holbeach market will move forward with greater strides than in the past, and the town itself will feel the benefit of the change.”[iii]
The commissioners at Spalding were trying hard to improve the market at pace. Even before they had secured the market rights they started to improve the paving in the market place paving it in granite, delayed slightly as it was in short supply due to unprecedented national demand. The Sheep Market was surfaced with asphalt as well as having permanent iron pens erected in 1876. The commissioners carried out these works before the market rights were purchased from the Manor of Spalding at the cost of £4000, a considerable sum for the time. Such a purchase and the tolls to be charged had to be approved by the Local Government Board and announced to the public, but as the new pens were ready to use and business was being lost to Holbeach the use of these was accelerated. The levies on rate-payers were unpopular. The loans being raised for the market works alone being £6000 were of great concern to local property owners. In common with other works done by the commissioners they were not popular with everyone, but they got things done for the greater good of health and economic well-being of the town. It was this view and determination to keep things moving that saw the Sheep Market opened in January 1876 without any public notification which resulted in an eloquent public outcry in the Spalding Free Press of February 8th 1876:
“The duty of a public journalist is not always a pleasant or agreeable one. Circumstances not unfrequently occur which compel him to indulge in criticisms which he would rather avoid; inasmuch as he is certain to give offence where none is intended, and to have motives imputed to him which do not exist. If he is honest to himself and the community to whom he serves it is absolutely certain that he will occasionally wound feelings which he never intended, and probably make enemies of some whose good-will he would rather retain. But the honest journalist cannot help himself. He is the servant of the public, and the public looks to the press not only to chronicle passing events, but to expose and correct errors which are apt to creep in in the conducting of public affairs; and to-day we have to call the attention of our readers to a piece of gross irregularity, mismanagement, or whatever it may be called.
Many of our readers are aware that our new Sheep Market was opened a fortnight today – but they were only made aware of the fact by the opening itself. They had no announcement of a public nature previous to the event that such was to be the case. It came upon the public as a surprise, and very many are anxious to know how it is that a market that has cost the ratepayers so much money, that has been so long in getting ready, and in which the town is so deeply interested, has been quietly opened for public business as it has been. There is, and there can be, but one opinion as to the improvement that has been effected; as far as we know there is no quarrel as to cost; everybody is pleased with the change; but to open it without any previous intimation that such was contemplated or intended, argues mismanagement or irregularity somewhere, which we would like to have vindicated or explained . Our Commissioners, we take it, are not an irresponsible body; in conducting their private business as farmers, tradesmen or what else, they may please themselves as to whether they will take others into their confidence. Yet we presume that no shopkeeper among them would open a new place of business without letting the fact and the date be known some time previously. But the new market is not a private affair – it is the property of the town; the cost of its renewal comes out of the rates – it is so great an improvement over the old filthy unsightly place of sale that the inhabitants as well as the sellers of stock may well be pleased. In all probability generations will pass away ere a new market will be required, and the Commissioners in our opinion have been guilty of treating the public with something like contempt in opening for business a market which belongs to them without the common courtesy of previous announcement. It seems to me without intending they have committed a very great blunder.”
The simple fact is that the commissioners opened the market before they were legally supposed to do and before the purchase of market rights had been fully completed. That one of the commissioners had a significant business in the sheep market that had experienced a sustained period of upheaval and lack of traffic may or may not have been a contributing factor. Regulation of commissioners was by and large a light touch approach and pragmatism was favoured over legality.
Technically there was no authority to open the Sheep Market which was possibly done by word-of-mouth. The appropriate regulatory notice required for operating the market was published just after the market rights were purchased off the Manor of Spalding on 29th July 1876, six months after it had been operating.
[i] The other markets recorded in Domesday book of 1086 in Lincolnshire are Kirton-in-Lindsey, Louth, Boston and Partney.
[ii] Justices Itinerant at Lincoln term 9 Edward I , 1281.
[iii] Spalding Guardian 30th May 1876
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