Rotherham's Markets & Fairs
I expect that there has been a weekly market in Rotherham for as long as there has been a town. For a very long time Rotherham was primarily agricultural and local farmers would use it as a place to sell, or more likely barter, since specie was always in short supply, their surplus produce for items that they required. Anything not produced in the town came on the backs of packmen who walked the length and breadth of the country selling their goods, or on the backs of mules or packhorses like those that travelled the salt roads from Cheshire carrying that most important of commodities - salt.
Even before Christianity became the norm people ensured that there were rituals like Bringing in the May, Harvest Festivals and Yule to relieve the absolute boredom of their routine lives. So these were subsumed into the Christian Calendar and saints days fairs were added to further spice things up a bit.
From what I have read the lords of the manor or the church authorities, whoever organised and operated the market or fair, made considerable sums of money from the letting of stalls and the taxation of goods. The income from an important fair sometimes formed the major source of income for a landowner and rights were jealously guarded. At some point the Norman Kings with their feudal system decided they could make a bob or two out of the markets and fairs that had long existed and introduced what I suppose we would call a system of licensing. This meant that you had to buy the right to operate the market or fair from the king by obtaining a charter and pay a fair few bob for the privilege.
The History of Markets in Rotherham
In 35 Edward I (c.1307) the king granted to Robert de Waddesley a Friday market in his Manor of Rotherham. However another authority states that the Monday and Friday markets were licensed by the Monarchs between 1207 and 1316. So, as in most things historical, you toss your penny and choose heads or tails whom you believe. Certainly when I were a kid, I remember being taught that the market and fair were granted to Rotherham by King John (Good old Johnny Lackland doubtless exacted a good few bob for the privilege).
At a date I have not discovered the rights to the markets passed to the Feoffees of Rotherham who utilised them until 1801. It was realised that the Markets were a very profitable concern and a market company was formed. A sum of £4,000 was subscribed and an Act of Parliament obtained which allowed the company to build a new market and giving them sole rights to this service. There was of course trouble. After a struggle local people managed to buy out the company for £4,103 and obtain the rights for the market therefore giving the town one of its first trading businesses.
Rotherham was an important centre for the buying and selling of livestock. By the early 1800s it was one of the largest livestock markets in the area dealing in fat sheep and fat cattle as well as lean cattle and pigs. In 1865 there was an epidemic of rinderpest and the market was closed to all animals except those due for immediate slaughter. The closure lasted for more than two years by which time Sheffield had opened a cattle market themselves and stolen most of the trade. The market on its ancient site at the Crofts was closed for redevelopment and a new cattle market was opened in 1927 on Corporation Street (very convenient for the abattoir). I don't have the year in which it closed but do not remember there being a beast market in Rotherham, even in my younger days.
When I was young the open air market was held in Domine Lane and Market Street though I don't know if it had always occupied this site. The market hall was somewhere between the two. I believe that there was a fire, though I can't remember the year and after this the market hall was demolished. The site is now being redeveloped as shops and apartments.
Rotherham built a new Market Hall and Market right on the other side of town.
The History of Fairs in Rotherham
In the year 9 John (1207AD) a fair was granted at Rotherham to last two days, on the Vigil and Feast of St Edmund, 15th and 16th November. Fairs were a very different kettle of fish in the old days before you could buy everything online. They were places where chapmen, coleporteurs, journeymen, merchants and entertainers turned up sell their wares. These could well be items that might not be available in the town at any other time of the year, books, inks, spices, pins and needles, ribbons and laces, fine cloth. In the boring round of agricultural life the Fairs were a great highlight of the year and I expect there was much boozing and bad behaviour.
For many years through my childhood and on into my teens there used to be a funfair held every November in the car park where the police station and courts now exist, known to everybody far and wide as 'The Stattis Fair' (i.e. Statutes Fair as it was allowed by Statute). Like most other remnants of old Rotherham this too is gone - it closed in 1978.
There are still some fairs around selling specialist items but, Rotherham being Rotherham, and the majority of purses here welded tightly shut, these are not prolific. I should know I sold goods at craft fairs and markets for a number of years and never made a profit which is why I gave up the struggle some years ago.