Topic: Increase the importance of markets!

[Spenk009]

Hi all, I have a few suggestions to the pakset.

What if we connect windmills, textile mills and potteries to markets? Currently we will always have plenty of vegetables and, depending on the surroundings, ample supplies of fruits, meat and fish. But these goods are usually limited to shorter journeys due to the proper industry distancing (less than 30km as the crow flies), meaning we create local networks for the market. The windmills, textile mills, and potteries have a different issue. They spawn few consumer industries and (realistically) don't ship as many goods in a given time to justify a network in of itself.

Combined with a higher rate of spawning markets, the change in importance of a market might bring developing goods networks back into play for the pre-industrialization era.

Another thread from a month ago discussed different ranges of stops, which could improve multi-industry/multi-market cities removing the need of building multi-tile stops and lines for the different types of goods accepted.

[jamespetts]

This is an interesting idea; but are these the sorts of goods that were in fact sold in markets in 18th and 19th century Britain?

[TheRoadmaster1996]

I remember watching an old documentary on British Market towns from the Second World War. It's been awhile but it might give some clues about old markets in Britain. The film is called Market Town and filmed in 1942. It tells of the average day in a nameless Market Town in Lincolnshire on Market Day and it's history and importance to the local culture.

Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK6mliHs8MQ

The video description does mention fine china and curtains being offered at the market.

[jamespetts]

I remember watching an old documentary on British Market towns from the Second World War. It's been awhile but it might give some clues about old markets in Britain. The film is called Market Town and filmed in 1942. It tells of the average day in a nameless Market Town in Lincolnshire on Market Day and it's history and importance to the local culture.

Here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK6mliHs8MQ

The video description does mention fine china and curtains being offered at the market.

What was being sold in the 1940s is not a very reliable guide to what was being sold in the 1750s - what I am interested in is whether there are data to support the suggestion made in the original post.

[TheRoadmaster1996]

Still, you can use it for later and modern markets. Plus, it gives a good layout of a market town which players could use.

[Spenk009]

The original suggestion is driven by the fact that it is quite difficult to start with a goods network. I have looked more into this and while flour is not implied to be a good sold at market, bread certainly is. May I suggest instead we connect bakeries to the markets? Textile mills and potteries, as TheRoadmaster1996 suggested could then be included too. This would drive home the importance of a town having a local trading platform that would attract people from all over.

As a side query, if we have two towns with each a market close by each other and only one town and its market is served. Would the more stocked and therefore more successful market cause growth in the town in lieu of the other one that would suffer by comparison as a direct result of the differing service quality?

[TheRoadmaster1996]

I think it will depend on how close the factories are to the market town. If a market town has factories close to it while the one across the river does not, the first town will receive its goods first and that should draw more customers to that town rather then the town across the river which would have to wait to receive it's supplies.

[jamespetts]

Would bread have been sold in markets in the 18th and 19th centuries? Surely at these times, the bread would simply have been sold wherever it was baked? Does anyone have research material on this?

[TheRoadmaster1996]

I haven't found anything yet. HOWEVER, I did find something interesting about the original post about textiles at markets.

According to https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol9/pp269-274:

A wool market was apparently held privately in a hall in St. Runwald's parish until 1373...  In 1729 the keepership of the wool market was granted to the keepers of the bay hall, and although the borough made a lease of both the market and the hall in 1732, the market was not recorded thereafter. So, yes, they did sell textiles at markets in the 1750s.

[jamespetts]

I haven't found anything yet. HOWEVER, I did find something interesting about the original post about textiles at markets.

According to https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol9/pp269-274:

A wool market was apparently held privately in a hall in St. Runwald's parish until 1373...  In 1729 the keepership of the wool market was granted to the keepers of the bay hall, and although the borough made a lease of both the market and the hall in 1732, the market was not recorded thereafter. So, yes, they did sell textiles at markets in the 1750s.

Wool and textiles are not the same thing - textiles can be made from wool, but a "wool market" suggests that what is being sold is the raw material, not the end product.

[Matthew]

I have been doing some reading about 18th and 19th century markets, but my PC time is currently limited so it will be a while before I can write anything up.

I've not yet found anything perfectly relevant yet, though. And my nearest library has not yet re-opened after COVID-19, so it might be a long time before I have access to some sources. :-(

[jamespetts]

Don't worry - this is not critical or urgent. Thank you for your work so far.

[TheRoadmaster1996]

I haven't found any hard evidence that bread was sold at markets either.

[wlindley]

It would seem more likely that high-value artisan goods like fancy pottery or pastries might be sold at a market, whereas ordinary earthenware or bread would likely be too heavy and inexpensive to warrant transport from their place of manufacture.

Perhaps there might be some fiction literature (Dickens, maybe?) that mentions these things at a market at that time?

[freddyhayward]

I have no evidence, but I was under the impression that markets would sell almost everything and were central to town/village life.

[jamespetts]

I have no evidence, but I was under the impression that markets would sell almost everything and were central to town/village life.

I suspect that it is probably much more complex than that. There are plenty of records of specific types of market, i.e. markets that sell one specific type of goods, as in the "wool market" mentioned above. A well known example is the Covent Garden market in London, which, until the 1970s, was a fruit and flower specialist market.

One has to think what the function of this kind of market was - in other words, why were goods being sold in stalls in squares or in the street rather than in dedicated buildings? The answer is because these stalls would have been cheaper than dedicated buildings - at least for people selling things who did not have dedicated buildings in the centre of town. Those things would likely to be produce from farms that would have to be made/grown in a place with a large amount of open land attached and could not be produced in the centre of towns. So things like fruit, vegetables, meat and fish would be sold at markets as there was no need for the people who made these things to have permanent buildings in town centres.

However, manufactured goods were different. Most manufactured goods would need a permanent building to make them - bread would need a bakery, clothes a tailor, boots a bootmaker, hats a milliner, ropes a chandler and so forth. Those buildings would be in the centre of towns as there would be no reason to have them anywhere else, and transport to distant locations would not be viable in any event. These buildings would act both as places for the manufacture and the sale of goods. This is where the term "shop" as a place to buy goods comes from: it is short for "workshop". Only much later, when very large manufactories (later just "factories") were built and mass production was a thing did it become economically worthwhile to separate retail and manufacturing into different premises, and the modern idea of a "shop", a permanent building where merchandise is sold but not manufactured, came into existence.

It may be that there was a time when markets also came to function as retailers of mass produced goods, but how significant that they were in this respect is unclear, and this would only realistically have been likely to have been the case from the mid to late 19th century and later.

[TheRoadmaster1996]

I recommend this website:
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp305-312

The page has a history of markets in Oxford but if you search "markets" in the search bar it will take you to the history of markets of different British cities and areas such as Colchester, York, Canterbury, etc. it also has other things related to British history which might come in handy.

[Matthew]

I suspect that it is probably much more complex than that

Yes, it's somewhat more complex that Freddy thought. To start with his impression

that markets would sell almost everything and were central to town/village life.

The last part of that sentence contradicts one of the clearest points in the literature: "substantial villages ... sometimes had populations similar to those of small towns, but are distinguished by their lack of a market, which in contemporary gazetteers and directories was often the crucial defining feature of urban status."† So contemporaries recognized that the presence of a market was an important feature of economic life.

But what exactly is a "market"? The OED gives the oldest meaning of "market" as "a place at which trade is conducted", but then elaborates that as "a meeting or gathering together of people for the purchase and sale of provisions or livestock, publicly displayed, at a fixed time and place; the occasion or time of this." So it elides "market" with marketplace; it is very difficult to disentangle the two meanings. The in-game Market (I will use a capital M for it) is surely using the word in the sense of 'place'. So how often does a 'market' (in the sense of a meeting) take place there? Many markets were weekly affairs and since pak128.Britain-Ex only has a daily cycle, the in-game Market surely represents both daily and weekly markets.

That helps to answer the question that James raises:

why were goods being sold in stalls in squares or in the street rather than in dedicated buildings?

Stalls, rather than buildings, were used because a weekly market did not justify investing in a permanent building. And even in the context of a daily market, it would not necessarily be the same traders at the same place every day. A trader might be at one town on Monday and another on Tuesday. Or she might only be present at the marketplace for part of each day, since she also had to spend time on the farm.

And I'm not sure how big the distinction between stalls and buildings would have been in this era. James clearly distinguished our Market from permanent, indoor market halls. I guess this is based on the graphics but it does rub uneasily against the fact that the economic purposes of the two seem to have been very similar; market halls were often the enclosure of an existing market. The pak's Market might also be said to represent the annual or quarterly markets or fairs that were of regional importance.

I recommend this website:
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp305-312

Yes, Oxford provides good examples of many of these issues. There is a very successful Covered Market there today (I highly recommend the English breakfast at Brown's Cafe!), which is open daily (except Sundays). But it grew out of the existing non-daily markets. The article also includes fairs (including St Giles' Fair, which is also alive and well), which strengthens the case that this should be included in our understanding of the in-game market.

Another definitional issue is whether we mean retail or wholesale markets. James' paradigmatic example was the Covent Garden fruit and flower market, which was primarily a wholesale market. And this is typical for the period: markets were used by urban consumers but they were also (perhaps even primarily) aimed at the pedlars and village shopkeepers who supplied the (rural) majority of the population. But the in-game Market is visited by consumers from residential populations and it does not supply other industries.

There are plenty of records of specific types of market

This is true. In one sense, there is an overwhelmingly large number of records, because searching for "market" gets you innumerable references to the abstract sense (as in "the labour market").

But unfortunately there do not seem to be many records from specific markets. One of the best sources of information about 18th and 19th century shops were trade directories, but they do not generally include market traders. Another is the shop tax, which seems not to have applied to markets either. I also suspect that market traders kept relatively few written records. And the goods we are interested in (bread and textiles) did not attract duties, so we do not have the relatively good documentation that exists for beer and spirits, etc. Our best sources are likely to be probate records and....

Perhaps there might be some fiction literature (Dickens, maybe?) that mentions these things at a market at that time?

I thought of this too and one of the research articles cited Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. I trawled though it and got some useful background info on bazaars, but nothing definitive for our purpose.

† Stobart, Jon and Bailey, Lucy (2017) 'Retail revolution and the village shop, c. 1660–1860' in Economic History Review 71(2), 393-417. References from preprint at https://pure.northampton.ac.uk/files/8621390/Stobart_Jon_Bailey_Lucy_WOL_2017_Retail_revolution_and_the_village_shop_c_1660_1860.pdf 18/AUG/2020.