Description
The farmers market is held the 3rd
Thursday of every month in the Market Place. Over 20 traders attend each event so you can
be assured of quality local foods direct
from the producer. The market starts at 8.30am and
usually trades until 3.30pm or until sold out if sooner.
If you are a
local producer and would like to attend our monthly farmers' market
then please contact Jo in the Market Office on 0191 384 6153 for
further information.
The City of Durham has long had an association
with Markets going back to Saxon and Norman times.
The Market Place became the focal point for traders
to sell their wares alongside farmers, butchers, greengrocers,
shoemakers, street pedlars and entertainers, all making
the weekly Market Day a colourful and vibrant social
occasion for all the family.
By the start of the Nineteenth Century
overcrowding in the Market Place became a real problem
with the various trades being widespread and disorganised
throughout that part of the City. Traders banded together
with local businessmen to petition for both the building
of a purpose built Market Hall and for a more organised
running of the Markets. In May 1851 The Durham Markets Company
Act was passed for establishing new Markets and Market
Places in the City of Durham, for abolishing the Corn
Tolls and for regulating the Markets and Fairs within
the said City and Suburbs therof and for other Purposes.
The area set aside for the new Market
Hall was part of the site of New Place, the former
palace and gardens built in the Middle Ages for the
Nevilles of Raby and Brancepeth, the Earls of Westmoreland,
who had forfeited the property to the Crown after
their involvement in the ill-fated Rebellion of the
North in 1569.
The palace was eventually bought from
King James II in 1612 by Henry Smith's Charity and
was used as a factory, workhouse and charity school
before being demolished to ultimately make way for
the present Market Hall.
The Market Hall is described by Nikolaus
Pevsner as ‘interior mostly with the usual cast-iron
roof in a series of pitches on cast-iron columns,
but stone vaulted at the N end. The back elevation,
exposed to Leazes Road, has no Gothic pretences, just
a massive retaining wall and plain segmental-headed
windows under a row of gables’. | 
