Image ID: 09352

Converting the Victorian Market Hall into the Buttermarket Shopping Centre, 1980s

Courtesy of Tom Healey

Market Hall
Newark on Trent
England

Newark's Royal Exchange shopping arcade, behind the Town Hall, recaptures much of the splendour that originally marked it as one of the town's great Victorian improvements. A foundation stone near the Middlegate entrance tells us the building was begun in October 1883, although the story of its construction goes back much further than that. In fact, the building of the covered market, as it was originally known, was simply the last in a long series of events which give this part of town its colourful history. In 1798, almost 100 years before the market was built, the site behind the Town Hall was allocated for use as Newark's meat market or butcher's shambles. New buildings for the purpose were erected on the site and opened in 1799. Adjacent to the shambles and also fronting Middlegate was the town's theatre, which had been established by J. Brough in 1774. The theatre and shambles continued side-by-side until 1882, when the Urban Sanitary Authority began investigating alternative sites for the butchers' market. As things stood, the mere location of the shambles, with its extensive displays of raw meat, could make for a most unpleasant atmosphere in the town hall (directly above) on hot days. Moreover, the authority expressed concern about the state of disrepair and untidiness into which the shambles had been allowed to descend. Newark's MP, W. N. Nicholson, considered the whole area nothing short of a scandal, while the Mayor, Robert Henry, described the buildings as simply a miserable tumble of dens. Not wishing to lose the retail aspect completely, the sanitary authority proposed that the site be taken over by a covered market dedicated purely to the sale of groceries and poultry. By August 1882, a competition for designing the new structure had been held and won by Mr C. Bell, FRIBA, of London. Tenders were invited and accepted from local firms such as C. Baines (

Date: 1980

Organisation Reference: NCCE003321

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