extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY ANTRIM The natural resources of south west Antrim led to some occupations peculiar to that area alone – basket making for instance. These were made from osiers [willow twigs] which grew by the shores of Lough Neagh. The lighter, finer osiers were used for the baskets (potato baskets were a speciality), and the stronger, thicker ones were made into firkin hoops. Potato baskets were sold through hardware merchants or directly to farmers at local markets. Some were exported. Women gathered rushes for making seats for rush-bottomed chairs. Other occupations included fishing and the inevitable farming, spinning and weaving.       Crumlin in 1750 consisted of a public house, a smith’s forge and two houses. It must have improved soon after, for an advertisement in the Belfast News Letter of 5 July 1765 stated:       Wanted: an honest careful man who can be well recommended to work in a flax mill in Crumlin. He can be furnished with a house and a piece of land if he wants it and constant work the whole year. For further particulars, enquiries to Samuel Campbell in Crumlin or Robert McMurry in Magheragall who will treat with him for the same. There is also selling at the same mill some choice good flax by wholesale.       In that same year the MacCaulay family arrived in Crumlin and built extensive flour and corn mills. The town probably owes its success to that family, for seventy years later it was described in The Ordnance Survey Memoir as ‘a neat, regular built and improving little town.’ By then post cars were calling at the inn on the main street. A market was being held regularly on the first Monday of every month, when the usual assortment of cows, sheep, pedlar goods, yarn and crockery was exposed for sale. No tolls or customs were levied by either of the landlords – the Marquis of Hertford or Lord Pakenham of Langford Lodge. Attempts at starting a horse fair in Crumlin failed, possibly because of the already well-established horse fairs at Antrim, Parkgate and Oldstone. Many farmers took their produce to Belfast, a distance of fourteen miles, and brought back lime from Shankill.       Lisburn’s position on the main canal, road and rail route into the interior of the country, not to mention its being on the main road from Belfast to Dublin, ensured its continuing success since its foundation early in the seventeenth century. It was destroyed by fire in the rebellion of 1641 and again (by accident) in 1707 but recovered rapidly afterwards in each instance. By the end of the eighteenth century there were twelve public coaches passing through the town daily besides other conveyances. The town was by then well supplied with hostelries including the Hertford Arms and the King’s Arms, the latter having been established nearly a hundred years earlier. Add to this its fame as a market and linen town, its flour mills, grist mills, tanneries and brick fields and its success was assured. Its Tuesday markets have existed since 1627 when Charles I granted Edward, Viscount Conway the right to hold them. A new market house was built a few years later and parts of it can still be seen within the present Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum. In those days the main goods sold were linen yarn, wool and their related products; also hides, butter, tallow and salt beef. These were mainly sold around the market house.       The meat shambles was in the vicinity of Smithfield but the meat, along with pork and herrings, was sold in Market Square. In 1796 the Marquis of Hertford saw to it that new slaughterhouses were erected at Brown’s Entry, which ran behind the Market Street shops from Smithfield to Bow Street, with a narrow exit onto the latter. This was known as the New Shambles and consisted of five slaughter houses and a piggery. The By-wash or Bow River took away the effluent. By the late 1920s these slaughter houses had gone and meat was prepared privately behind butchers’ shops. There were several of these in Bow Street, including Green’s, Cumins’s, Drake’s and Pat Laverty’s, all of which conveniently backed onto Smithfield where cattle were sold. It was to Smithfield that the young Morgan Greer made his way in 1929 to sell his first bullock:       You took your cattle out and you sold direct to the butcher. The butcher came out to the market to buy it. Sometimes they came to the farm. The very first animal I had was a black cross-bred bullock. I reared him and fattened him on turnips and yellow meal. I brought him to Smithfield to sell him. Jacob Green bought him. The bullock had to be weighed first. There was a big lump of manure hanging to his tail. Jacob came forward and cut the lump off. He didn’t want to be paying for the manure you see! Jacob was what was called a master butcher. He had a shop in Bow Street [still known as Green’s]. Every butcher had his own abattoir in those days at the back of the shop. The shop backed onto Smithfield. I had to walk the bullock over to the abattoir myself. That was my first venture on my own.       Wee pigs were sold in Smithfield too. I think pigs were sold every Tuesday. Cattle would have been only once a month; horses every two months. They brought the pigs in with the horse and cart. They lined up in the open market. First they took the horse out and let the shafts down. Then they stabled the horse, lifted the pigs out and dropped them into a big box or crate. They were well fed and well washed. The buyers could look in and see what sort of pigs they were. They would reach away in and get one by the tail to see that there weren’t any small ones in them. You had maybe ten pigs. You sold them to a man and he finished them – fattened them into pork. Then the Pigs Marketing Board came in and pork pigs – sold for pork, rather than bacon – went away by train. They were weighed at the goods station just off Antrim Street and went off to curers in Portadown and other places. They were graded before they left. A man called Gilliland used to put his hand into the cart and give them a grade. Sometimes we killed pigs on the farm and sold them as pork. We used to sell pork to G. & H. Bell’s in Hillsborough or sometimes we took it to Lisburn. You lined the cart with clean straw before you loaded them and put a white cloth on top. The cloth was usually made from a bleached flourbag. Pork was sold in Smithfield too.       Horses were sold at the Market Place end of the Dublin Road. They were lined up there from Fergie Dornan’s to R. & D. Thompson’s corner. They used to trot the horse so that the buyer could see his action. The man that was selling him, he ran alongside. Then some men would be feeling down the horse’s leg for side-bones; a wee bone at the side of the shin. If a side-bone developed he wouldn’t have been so mobile and he might have had a few years on him. Sometimes a professional man would have ‘choked’ him to see how he coughed, to test his wind.       The main provision market continued for centuries at the Market House in Market Square. Here you could buy hen eggs, duck eggs, onions, cheese, clothes (both new and second-hand), socks, stockings, china, tin-ware, earthenware, books, pig troughs, potato baskets, stable brooms, hatchets, shovels, spades, rakes, hemp ropes, bee skeps, cabbage plants, wash tubs, tables, chairs, churns, saddlery, old spinning wheels. Many items could be bought at a penny or less and hardly anything cost more than a few shillings. The market was always well supplied with poultry, milk, fish, pork and wool; also vegetables when in season. At one time meal, grain and potatoes were sold in the Square too. A new grain market was opened in Smithfield in 1828. Some time later a hay market was built with its own separate entrance and weighbridge in Smithfield Street.       Lisburn prospered in the seventeenth century with the rapid development of the linen industry. This began with the arrival of English settlers and was boosted in 1696 with the removal of a tax on Irish linens entering England. It was further boosted in 1698 with the arrival of Louis Crommelin, a French Huguenot settler with a special interest in the manufacture of high quality linen. In those days the main market for linen was Dublin.       Around 1750 a Linen Hall, described as ‘a large square court surrounded by a piazza of brick’ was just one of several buildings erected in Smithfield at the expense of the Marquis of Hertford. This was good news for the weavers as it was attended by ‘the most eminent linen merchants of the day’, many of whom lived in or near the town. It had an excellent brown linen market, the largest in Ulster in 1816, even exceeding such places as Dungannon and Armagh. Add to this the fact that Coulson’s damask manufactory in the town (built in 1766) was said to be the finest in the world and we have an idea of the pride taken by the people of Lisburn in the quality of their linen. But none of this was to last. Around 1820 the cottage industry began to fail, and the town commissioners sought other uses for the Linen Hall premises. The meat and herring market moved in nearby, much to the relief of those living in Market Square, as it took with it the smell emanating from the meat and bones. The building was later adapted to suit the markets for fowl, butter and, at a later date, eggs too. It would seem a far cry from linen to fowl, butter and eggs but it was the same people who brought all of these things to market.       The new grain market proved to be a great asset to the town. It was situated on the far side of Smithfield beside the Dublin Road and encompassed the markets for hay, grain and flax. As well as the weigh-house it had a number of sheds for the sale of potatoes. It had two main gates, one for carts entering the market and the other for carts leaving it. A third, smaller gate accommodated anyone who wished to leave the grain market and enter the main Smithfield area where animals were sold. The centrepiece was a ‘weighing’ or market house which contained the weighbridge, weigh-master’s office and stores. This had a steeple containing a bell which was rung to announce the commencement of the market. The steeple was surmounted by a fine weather vane. There were one or two other buildings – a house for a care-taker, for instance, and a shed for cutting up meat.       A small charge was levied for weighing. It ranged from a half-penny for a small sack of potatoes to two pence for a sack weighing three cwt or more, and sixpence for a cart load. A load of chaff cost sixpence too. There were strict rules governing the operation of the market. No grain could be disposed of without a weigh-master’s ticket. Empty carts were to be arranged in an orderly fashion at the back of the Market House and there was a fine of five shillings for the owner of any horse found in the market after the load had been taken off the cart.       Men were appointed to see that these and other market rules were observed. A court leet held on Saturday 19 September 1835 resolved that, among other things, John Cannon should receive £1 for keeping the market house open for labourers and clear of carts and cars. Joseph Thornton was to get £1 for ringing the market house bell and a further £1 10s. for winding up the clock. At the same time William Gregg (seneschal) was to see to it that £10 was spent on repairs to the weighbridge and market. He was given an additional £14 to pay six men to attend Glenavy Fair and to enforce market regulations. Presumably this was during one of the attempts to get that fair going again. His many other duties included looking after the sewers, pumps and fire engine and providing coats for the town bailiffs, the night watchmen and the men who looked after the butter market. Denis Kennedy was to receive one guinea for attending to the weighbridge at the butter market, £4 for keeping pigs and beggars off the street and two guineas for acting as town crier (Denis was still doing these things at the age of seventy-nine). William Close was entrusted with taking care of the meat market. His yearly wages were increased from £4 to £6 in 1837. It was his job to inspect the meat and issue certificates to the vendors stating that it was good and fit for sale.       Animals were sold over the years at various locations within the general area of Smithfield. For centuries they were sold between the Shambles and the grain market (now a car park). A map of 1903 shows the cattle market within the precincts of the grain market, and during World War II it moved across the road to the area between Smithfield Street and Christ Church on the Dublin Road. Horses were sold at the Market Place end of the Dublin Road (as previously indicated by Morgan Greer).       In the early days customs were charged on animals sold (but on nothing else) and there were just two fairs in the year, held in July and October to coincide with horse racing at the Maze. Dealers in small items often took their wares to the racecourse after the market. As in so many other places, Lisburn’s fairs were being held monthly by the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. In the 1930s the Variety Market moved from Market Square to the former grain market area of Smithfield: recently it moved again across Smithfield Street when the new Smithfield Square shops were built. The grain market was used for other purposes too. In the near famine years of 1831, 1835 and 1837 the indigent poor could go there and avail themselves of free soup on Wednesdays and Saturdays. (Lisburn’s workhouse did not open until 1841). And it was to the grain market that people flocked in their thousands to sign the Ulster Covenant in 1912.       Lisburn had other claims to fame. A few miles away, the round tower at Trummery was said to be a favourite haunt of highwayman Redmond O’Hanlon at the end of the eighteenth century. The longest working life ever recorded in the United Kingdom was that of Susan O’Hagan (1802 – 1909). She was in domestic service with three generations of the Hall family of Lisburn for ninety-seven years – from the age of ten to light duties at one hundred and seven.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extracts regarding County Antrim: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Forthcoming extracts regarding County Antrim: Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13

[ Back to Top ]

All Material © 1999-2005 Irelandseye.com and contributors