Chelmsford, Infirmary 1895

Photo ref: 35525

More about this scene

In the late 1870s the Grammar School boys had lost a corner of their cricket field when a new area was being laid out for the weekly market. The local Board of Health had put their foot down over the amount of debris that the market was depositing in the High Street every Friday. It was February 1880 when the new site opened. Built at the bottom of Threadneedle Street, it was given a new service road - Market Road - that cut through the open land between the Corn Exchange and the railway station. Cattle, pigs, horses and sheep could all be corralled there without causing too much of a health hazard. The gentle gradient meant all effluent would hopefully drain down towards the river. The Board then got its teeth into Chelmsford's twice-yearly fair. The pleasure fair, which had once lined both sides of the High Street, was now reduced to about half a dozen stalls. The railway had opened up new opportunities for leisure, and the fair's array of gewgaws and freak shows had rather lost its appeal in these more sophisticated times. The railway had also unseated the cattle fair from the New Street field where it had been since 1800. It relocated to Fair Field, between upper Duke Street and the Burgess Well. But Fair Field was sold to developers in 1877, and six years later Chelmsford's fairs were abolished altogether. The High Street shopkeepers no longer wanted them on their doorstep.