By Victor Spink
The Old Market House was was the commercial and central focus of Chertsey, with the old town pump to the left. We can still see today that Windsor Street was widened at the junction of Guildford Street to accommodate the two way passing of horse traffic in front of its arches. In the early days the town’s fairs and markets, plus the commercial and ceremonial occasions, would have held here or close by, with the bell rung to start or finish the proceedings.
In 1599, Queen Elizabeth I gave a Charter to Chertsey the right to hold a Market ‘Free of Fees’ meaning that the Crown did not want a cut of the rates, thus the Feoffees of Chertsey were formed to do good charitable works in the town giving blankets to the poor at Christmas. One could find out from a modern Feoffee the good works they carry out today although they do tend NOT to publicise their activities.
It is published here for the first time in a new frontal illustration derived from Sir John Soane’s watercolour of 1806 which did not show ‘the cage’, or the town lockup, but his drawing did show the stocks.
One John Brown, a Feoffee, had the market house pulled down in 1809 in an act mired in corruption and controversy which rid Chertsey of the very fine late Elizabethan – early Jacobean market house. The design and style was absolutely typical of that era.
Fine examples still exist in English towns, some in wood, and some in stone. Most now have, or had, a clock where Chertsey’s sun dial was placed. Perhaps the owners of the Old Market House, the Feoffees of Chertsey, determined against the cost of a clock in the same casual manner as they decided in the late seventeen hundreds and early 1800s against the cost maintaining the structure.
Here was a fine little building which was the commercial and central focus of Chertsey when it was first built, with the old town pump to the left of it. We can still see today that Windsor Street was widened at the junction of Guildford Street to accommodate the two way passing of horse traffic in front of its arches.
In the early days the town’s fairs and markets, plus the commercial and ceremonial occasions, would have held here or close by, with the bell rung to start or finish the proceedings.
The ladder up the middle of the floor to the room above is typical of market houses of this era and was used as a fortnightly Court of Pie Poudre, but later on in it’s life it was used as a granary.
The corrupt Feoffee John Brown pulled down this little gem of a building with the trite excuses that it was in bad order, and that the drunkards who were locked up overnight in ‘the cage’ from their Saturday night revelries were making too much noise and upsetting the faithful at prayer at their Sunday morning service. He also said that it was blocking the some of the view of the rebuilt St. Peter’s church.
The dismal fact is that Brown and the neglectful town elders had allowed the market house to deteriorate over the years so that it was unfit for purpose as was intended when it was first built.
The town crier would have made full use of the sheltered open space below to cry out the news, and to post official notices on the columns. The town crier would have had a lot to shout about in the first 50 years from under those arches. The death of James 1st; the beheading of Charles 1st; Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War; the instatement of Charles 2nd; the Great Plague of 1665; and the Great Fire of London (as could be seen from St. Ann’s Hill in September 1666). He would have also collected the rent from the market traders for the Feoffees.
In later days, Mrs Charles James Fox, who is buried some yards away in the church yard, is believed to be associated with the blackamore head above the sun dial on the market house to commemorate her husband’s involvement in passing the anti slavery bill in the House of Commons where he was most active in the abolition of the slave trade.
The Rt. Hon’ Charles James Fox himself might have stood up in his phaeton carriage to do some electioneering outside this market house, so thereby demonstrating his well known eloquence to the townsfolk of Chertsey.