Tyne and Wear HER(5638): Gateshead, market - Details
5638
Gateshead
Gateshead, market
Gateshead
NZ26SE
Commercial
Market
Medieval
C13
Documentary Evidence
By 1246 it is known that a market was being held because the mayor of Newcastle sued the Bishop of Durham over whether he should permit a market to be held on the same day as in Newcastle. Boyle quotes from court records of 1336 relating to a dispute between the Bishop of Durham and the Burgesses of Newcastle that Gateshead borough held a market two days a week "even as far as the middle of the bridge". During the post medieval period a market was held twice a week from the market cross, which lay between tollbooth and pant, to the blue stone on the Tyne bridge. After 1771 (when a great part of the medieval bridge was destroyed by a flood), the market extended only to the bridge gate. Witnesses in a court case of 1577 between Richard Natrass and the town of Newcastle said that "wheat, bigg and cattle… were on sale about a cross between the tollbooth and the pant; and beans, pease and oatmeal and other goods and merchandice sold at Brige-yate". Parliamentary commissioners in 1647 however noted that no fairs or markets were being held at that time. At some time (Manders suggests the late 17th century) a shoe fair developed, which by the 1720s was attracting traders from as far away as Teesdale, but it was in decline in the 19th century. In 1845 there were only seven stalls between Church Street and the railway bridge over High Street. The last shoe fair was held in 1853.
252
636
NZ252636
<< HER 5638 >> J.R. Boyle, 1890, Vestiges of Old Newcastle and Gateshead, p 219
F.W.D. Manders, 1973, A History of Gateshead, p 6
J. Sykes, 1866, Local Records, Vols I and II, p 78
E. MacKenzie, 1827, A Descriptive and Historical Account of the Town and Country of Newcastle, Vol 1, p 750
F.W.D. Manders, 1973, A History of Gateshead, p 25 and pp 91-92