The Green and the Market.

Here is a description of The Green and the Market from 1938, apart from the selling of animals it hasn't really changed a lot.



"Without its Wednesday market Boston would lose half its attractiveness. Even early on a Wednesday morning there is an atmosphere that makes it different from the ordinary day, the town puffs its chest out, feels more important because of its bustling activity. Plank-laden carts discharge their cargo for deft hands to set up the stalls, lorries with beast or poultry rattle down the streets, farmers and merchants drive up in their cars, and buses from the country districts bring visitors.

Down at the cattle pens they were already selling beast and I stood for a moment by the ring. But that is only one side of the market, and to the non farmer the least interesting. Only a few yards away the casual spectator can find much more to make him pause. Any Wednesday on Bargate Green you can walk round to find "lots" so strangely assorted that you fancy no one will ever buy them, but they do. Here is a great battery of cycles, sacks of potatoes are grouped a yard or two away and chairs, soon to be sold, are used by jaded auction attenders, a trunk load of books, a mass of twisted iron, a Chinese picture and planks of timber.

What's that he's saying now? "How much for Nelly?" Is this a slave market? But the assistant is holding up a dog. "Now come along, how much for Nelly? He's a grand dog. A shilling sir? Oh, come along, be serious, there's a collar and lead worth more than that. He's a fine ratter too is Nelly. How much am I offered? Is that the only offer I have? Very well, it's going for a shilling. A shilling to this gentleman. A few of the buyers detach themselves from the edge and move over to a young man whose hands are never still and he talks all the time. At his feet are pieces of brass, copper, taps and knobs and he is demonstrating and selling polish with which to clean them at sixpence a bottle.

Two gentlemen are selling razor blades and point out that it's silly to go paying high prices when you can get them of just the same quality at one third of the price. They joke that their most recent sale was forty of them to the Nottingham Suicide Club and all the members had died perfectly at ease and happy.
In the Market Place stallholders invite us to test their wares, these apples are unrivalled, these cough lozenges can't be equalled and this lotion was used by a personage whose name they had been requested not to mention, but these men with all their skill don't give us the kick that we get out of the salesmen on the Green. Over here is a man with a wild look in his eye, around him are linoleum pillars propped along the stall.

Outside the "Peacock" are the farmers and seed salesmen. Bronzed faces, bearded faces, jovial faces and hard faces. A crippled violinist is playing, nobody seems to take much notice of him and when a fashionably dressed woman fumbles in her bag, giving him a coin, she does it furtively, ashamed. It is tea time, parties go up into the cafes near the Market Place, women seeking a refuge from dust and noise, hugging parcels. In the streets the crowds grow smaller, one by one the stallholders take away their wares, and in the evening air the skeletons of stalls rise gaunt from a sea of paper bags and litter. Carts are loaded with the planks, lorries rumble away to distant towns, the hoses hiss in the cattle pens. Another market day is over.

Boston and J.B. Priestley

J.B. Priestley visited Boston in December 1933 and in his book "English Journey" describes the town as follows.

"...........The train curved round and then I saw, for the first time, that astonishing church tower known as Boston Stump. This tower is not quite three hundred feet high but nevertheless, situated as it is, it looked to me more impressive, not as a piece of architecture, but simply as a skyscraper, than the Empire State Building in New York, with its eleven hundred feet. It is all a matter of contrast. Here the country is flat, you have seen nothing raised more than twenty or thirty feet from the ground for miles and miles and then suddenly this tower shoots up to nearly three hundred feet. The result is that at first it looks as high as a moutain..........."
Mr. Priestley then goes on to describe market day in Boston:-

"The square was filled with stalls, and any remaining space in the centre of the town was occupied by either broad faced beefy farmers and their men, or enormous bullocks. My hotel was in the Market Square and it was so crowded with farmers and farm hands clamouring for beer, that it was not easy to get in at all. Never have I seen more broad red faces in a given cubic capacity".
Next he visited the Scala Cinema's cafe.

"......I went into the cinema cafe for tea. There were some rural folk in there and as I waited for tea I wondered why countrymen should so often have such high pitched voices. Two tables near me were occupied by girls and it was curious to see how carefully they had modelled their appearences on those of certain film stars. It was only the girls here, however, who had this cosmopolitan appearence, the young men looked their honest, broad, red-faced, East Anglian selves. What a mad mixture it all is, in this remote and decayed little town, the tremendous church tower, the chandlers and corn merchants, the farmers and bullocks, floods of beer, the imitation Greta Garbos alongside the time-old rural figures."

The Fair

The smell of candy floss and toffee apples, the caterpillar and speedway, the steam yachts, Rhona the Rat Girl and the boxing booth……….
Boston Mayfair has a very long history (to at least 1125) and traces it’s origins back to the great trading fair of medieval times although this was very different from the modern funfair that we know.

In the Middle Ages fairs were like markets and were held only once a year with merchants coming from all over Europe to buy and sell at the Boston fair.

However, by the 1890’s, the mix of fair rides and stalls that we know was certainly occupying both the Market Place and Wide Bargate and it is now one of the few remaining street fairs in the country.

The event, which has a Royal Charter, occurs in the first week of May (usually the 3^rd) and is surrounded by tradition and ceremony.

The Mayor declares the fair open at noon (see below) from the Assembly Rooms balcony overlooking the Market Place and the ceremony is attended by VIP guests including representatives of the Showmen’s Guild.

After the Fair has been declared open the mayor and guests tour with representatives from the Showmen’s Guild and are allowed to ride free on any of the attractions.

Families of showmen have been coming to Boston for generations, occupying the same pitches with their rides and stalls, which are jealously guarded. The Fair stays in the town for seven or eight days.

Below (1) Sideshows outside the Peacock and Royal Hotel in the 1940's.

Below (2) The Helter Skelter near the Post Office in Bargate in the 1920's.