Market House, Market Drayton, Shropshire, England, 1824. This gabled, open-sided market house illustrates a relatively refined but small market structure, treated as a temple. Note how the center pair of columns in the gable end are more widely spaced than the others, suggesting that the principal axis of circulation for shoppers was down the center of the building, with market stalls on either side. This is the arrangement adopted for the Williamsburg Market House (photo: Photograph by Jeffrey E. Klee, CWF).
In two early Reconstruction Blog posts, architectural historian Carl Lounsbury described the market day scene: what you might see, hear, and smell, and how markets functioned in 18th century towns. Architectural conservator Matt Webster then walked us through the process of calculating quantities, and producing (by hand) the materials needed to reconstruct Williamsburg’s Market House. But how did we get from “there” to “here”? In this post, architectural historian Jeff Klee describes the architectural field work that informed working drawings for Williamsburg’s 18th century Market House.
Recent field research for the Market House project took the Foundation’s architectural historians to Virginia, Georgia, and Great Britain in seearch of information about how provincial markets were designed, built, used, and supplied with fittings. We wanted to learn, in particular, about their level of refinement relative to contemporary public buildings; how they provided storage and display furnishings for sellers; and how they managed the movement of people, goods, and vehicles around and through the regulated market area. Documentary and print sources hint at the answers, but we knew we would learn much by looking carefully at surviving markets from our period. The results of this research directly informed our design for Williamsburg’s market house.
Market House, Hexham, Northumberland, England, 1766. Note how the supports on the north, west, and east sides are cut stone columns, while those on the south side, where sellers kept their stalls, are simple, square wooden posts (photo: Jeffrey E. Klee, CWF)
Field research led to some important, sometimes surprising, discoveries. For example, even when markets were open on four sides, there was a clear orientation to one side. In other words, they typically had a “front.” A few, like one in Louisburg, Georgia, were centered in the market square, but usually markets were set to one side of the market place, accommodating market-day activities in front of them. At the wonderful Georgian-era market in Hexham, Northumberland, this orientation was reinforced in the subtle manipulation of the building’s finish. On three sides of this temple-like structure, round stone Doric columns support the roof; the fourth, the rear, does the job with much plainer, square wooden posts. Similarly, the front half of the ceiling, where buyers congregated, was plastered, while the ceiling near the wooden posts was left unfinished, exposing the underside of the roof.
Williamsburg’s market house will be similarly oriented toward Duke of Gloucester Street, with a broad market place before it; like most surviving markets that we visited, it will be well built, and modestly ornamented with chamfers decorating principal framing members.
Architectural historian, Willie Graham recording the king post truss at Market Drayton, Shropshire, England (photo: Jeffrey E. Klee, CWF).
Paving was another means to express the relative importance of the market, and served additionally, as a way to keep it clean, and to delineate the area in which the mandated price for goods must be observed. The best paving materials in surviving markets are usually confined to the floor of the market structure, with an inferior surface chosen for the area surrounding it. Our Williamsburg Market House will have a uniform, carefully laid brick floor in running bond, using whole bricks. The much larger market place is already being covered with a mixture of brick bats (half or three-quarter bricks) and whole bricks.
Town Hall, Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England, 1655. The stone bollards between the columns were added in 1817 to prevent vehicles from entering the ground floor market (photo: Jeffrey E. Klee, CWF).
We saw many provisions for controlling movement through market houses and market places in our field research, and the importance of keeping carts and horses away from the principal sales area is abundantly supported in the documentary record. In 1790, the Selectmen of Boston ordered that “no Horses shall be suffered to stand in the Rear of the Meat Stalls, or in the Inclosures behind them, but as many Carts may be put behind staid Stalls as may be accommodated, and all other Carts shall be put in a range by the old Engine House.”1
The exclusion of carts and horses from market buildings was often achieved by the installation of bollards, as at Tetbury, Gloucestershire, where stone obelisks were inserted in the bays between the structural posts in 1817. Print sources suggest that a common way to regulate the movement of buyers and sellers was through the arrangement of the stalls themselves along the perimeter of the market house, creating a passageway to one side, or through the center. This was certainly the arrangement at the market in Hexham, for example, and apparently at Bewdley, as well. At Williamsburg’s market, we found no evidence for bollards in our period, so we have chosen to direct movement through the building through the positioning of stalls.
English markets often occupied the ground floor of town halls. At Deddington, a 17th century wooden building was improved in the early nineteenth century by being encased in brick. At the left side of the image, you can see small rust stains for hooks once nailed to the inner face of a wooden wall plate. This is rare evidence for market fittings being attached directly to a building, rather than to a temporary wooden stall. Photograph by Jeffrey E. Klee, CWF.
A surprising discovery in our field investigations was just how little evidence there was for permanent fixtures and fittings. Among dozens of buildings, we found very little evidence for hardware that was permanently attached to the structure. Some large meat hooks at the market in Fredericksburg and some suggestive rust stains in a little market in Deddington, Oxfordshire, constitute the entire corpus of physical evidence for permanent fittings. Market sellers, it seems, did not usually attach their hooks and shelves to the market building, but rather relied on stalls, or more ephemeral arrangements of tables and benches to display their goods. Whether this practice was the result of regulation (“…affix no hooks or other hardware to ye market posts…” e.g.) or simple economy (costly hardware could move with the seller), the pattern is clear. Williamsburg’s reconstructed market will show how sellers in the colonial era displayed their goods using large wooden stalls and more portable benches, tables, and boxes.
Field notes: Amersham Town Hall and Market, Buckinghamshire, England.
Our fieldwork on surviving market houses will lend the Williamsburg market the integrity, richness, and subtlety that characterize the best historic reconstructions. While attentive visitors may notice the chamfered posts and differences in paving, all who pass through the market will appreciate the nuanced quality of its design.
1. Whitmore, William H., ed., A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Volume 27, Containing the Selectmen’s Minutes from 1787 through 1798 (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, 1896), p. 131].
- Contributed by Jeffrey E. Klee, Architectural Historian
Dewitt Yingling says
Was the Market House shown on the Frenchman’s map?
Oh, how we wish that the Frenchman had labeled all of his buildings!
There is, indeed, a building depicted on the Frenchman’s Map in the area where we are rebuilding the Markethouse, but its function is not identified. Fortunately, on a 1781 drawing, surveyor Simeon DeWitt labels the “Markethouse” on the south side of Duke of Gloucester Street, across from the Courthouse. By “layering” evidence in this way, we feel confident that we have chosen the correct location on Market Square for the Markethouse.