Monument record 2416/2/4 - Wool Market

{1}The first specific reference to the shops of the wool merchant or wool market I in 1307. The Woolmarket and the adjacent Hall of Please represented a distinct area of the market with its own shops, largely beneath the Hall and immediately adjacent and fronting onto the main market place. However, already by 1471 areas of the Woolmarket had been converted to other uses, several parcels of waste being granted out and also a barn there. The number of stalls on the Woolmarket decline as they were converted to shops,.

By 1542 there were 8 shops there. By 1565 this had declined to 5 and all the stalls had gone. By 1565 the Woolmarket had become a curtilage. This was the last stage in the encroachment of the market place, which must have begun in the early medieval period. The pattern remained largely the same from 1565 to 1813 when the market place was finally cleared in a major clearing and repaving of the town under parliamentary Act.The economic activity in the town may have suffered significantly in the later 14th and 15th centuries and even in the 16th century the Woolmarket may have been in decay. However by the Tudor period this was probably not a general decline in economic activity but rather a shift in focus from one trade to another and a restructuring of the way in which the commercial activity was conducted. Hence in 1536-7 we find that Thomas Brown and Smyth had made a little shop which had annoyed the king’s street. They were instructed to clear it away (?) or to ‘make it clean’ under pain of a substantial fine.

<1> Foard G.; Ballinger J.;, 2002, Northamptonshire Extensive Urban Survey: Oundle, Section 3.5.1.1 Market Place (Report). SNN102637.

Record last edited

Sep 7 2012 10:31AM