History of Broad Street markets
Broad Street markets have a very long history. The Pipe Roll of the Bishop of Winchester, 1210-11, contains reference to the 'Forum de Alresford' aka Alresford Market.
Godfrey de Lucy, Bishop of Winchester from 1189 to 1204, established Alresford market to help improve trade between Alresford and Winchester. He had the centre of the town demolished and remodelled in a T-shape which still exists today. Broad Street which, as its name suggests is unusually wide, was likely designed as a market place.
By building up the trade between the two towns at his own expense, the Bishop was rewarded a charter from King John which gave him and his successors the right to collect all fines, taxes, customs and tolls from the trade up and down the River Itchen. It would have been in Godfrey de Lucy's economic interests to provide Alresford with a street wide enough to hold a large market.
In the thirteenth century there was a market house at the top end of Broad Street, near where the church now stands. It was next to a 'shambles' where animals were butchered and slaughtered for sale alongside parchment made from sheepskin. There would have been fish stalls, almost certainly selling eels caught on the River Arle or in the Alresford Pond. A bell was rung to start the market. Traders that started to peddle their wares before the bell tolled could be fined.
In 1572 Alresford's status as a free borough, and entitled to its own Corporation, was confirmed in writing by the Bishop of Winchester. Times were hard, poverty was rife and the markets were stagnant. To try to rectify this, the bishop committed the management and the revenues from all markets and fairs to the Town Bailiff and his Burgesses.
In 1774, Robert Boyes, Master at Perins Grammar School, wrote, 'The markets that are held on Thursday, partly through the situation of the place and partly by the re-establishment of the navigation from Winchester to Southampton, are become very considerable. In times when there is a free exportation of corn, it is one of the greatest markets in Hampshire for wheat and barley. There are frequently above one hundred loads of wheat sold in a day'. He also mentions toys, haberdashery, seed, bread, oats, bacon and cheese amongst the other products at a typical market in Broad Street during his times.
This weekly Thursday market continued under the auspices of the Bailiff of the town until 1890, when the local government reforms of the 1880's swept away the post of Bailiff. As a direct result of this legislation, the New Alresford Town Trust was passed a baton curled inside which was the parchment that proclaimed in writing the ancient right to hold a market every Thursday in the town, and it still holds those rights today. Although the market lapsed for several decades between the 1930s and 1970s, the Town Trust revived it and hasn’t allowed it to lapse since.