Sheep being driven home from Totnes market over the bridge (© Totnes Image Bank and Rural Archive)

For most farmers, the two markets in the town were absolutely essential to their economic survival. Totnes had two markets, the Cattle Market, held initially at the Lamb every other Tuesday, before later transferring for a short period to Totnes Racecourse (now the Industrial Estate), and the Friday Pannier Market, held in what is now the Civic Square but which was, until it was destroyed by fire in the 1950s, a traditional covered market with stalls, the front of which came right out to the High Street. Douglas Matthews recalls the Pannier Market as being “all covered, with old stalls with top and bottom doors, and a separate bit in the middle. Anyone could sell anything, rabbits (this was pre- days) and so on”. For Val Price, the weekly Pannier Market was as much about meeting friends as it was about shopping. “You’d meet your friends from out of town there”, she said, “main things I remember buying there were sweets and butter”.

Sheep being bought and sold in the market held in the Lamb every other Tuesday (© Totnes Image Bank and Rural Archive)

The Cattle Market was a key element of the local economy. Not everyone recalls it favourably. Alan Langmaid said “On Tuesday, the town became what you would imagine the Somme to be. It was muddy, dirty, dungy, smelly, drunken, bloody and crowded”. On market days the pubs closest to the market, the Kingsbridge, the Bayhorse, the Plymouth and the Bull Inn were open all day. For Andy Langford, a young teenager at the time, market day was the day when, as an underage drinker, one could get served in the pubs.

The front of Totnes market, before it was destroyed by fire in the 1950s and opened out into the public square of today (© Totnes Image Bank and Rural Archive)

Ken Gill recalls how the Cattle Market was what brought farmers and their wives into the town, while the husbands traded, haggled and drank, the wives would go shopping, providing a vital boost for the town’s economy. Although it created a certain degree of nuisance and put a huge strain on the town’s traffic infrastructure, the Cattle Market’s passing was, for some, a loss. Ken Gill said:

Once you took away the Market it wasn’t the same.

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