extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY DOWN Downpatrick, once known as Rathkeltair, was a place of considerable importance. Saint Patrick arrived there in the year 432 and founded the abbey which over the centuries has been plundered and attacked time and time again. The town was also attacked by John de Courcy in the twelfth century at which time it was described as but a collection of wattle and daub dwellings grouped round a monastery on a hill. Its markets almost certainly date back to that time, for coins minted in Downpatrick and bearing de Courcy’s name have been found. The broken cross at the Cathedral is thought to have once stood near the market house at the centre of the town. If so, it is probably the remains of a market cross – another indication that markets existed in Downpatrick before the Plantation. It was at the market cross in Downpatrick that Edward Bruce proclaimed himself king in 1315. However he was defeated and slain in battle at Dundalk within three years.       The town has always depended largely on the wants and needs of farmers. Hundreds found employment in weaving. The linen woven in the area was marketed in the town itself. In the early years it had four fairs one of which was held on Saint Patrick’s Day. By 1837 there were six, held in January, March, May, June, October and November. Later they increased to twelve and then to thirteen, with two being held in the month of May when farmers needed extra cattle to eat the grass which was always lush at that time of year. Tolls in the early days were due to the Lord of the Manor who had been granted the patent to hold them. Sixpence had to be paid by anyone with a covered stall and fourpence for a stall belonging to a hatter, shoemaker or broguemaker.       Fourpence was also the toll due on a pack of wool, sack of apples, load of earthenware, carcass of beef, cow, ox, bull, mare or horse. Twopence was charged on hogs and swine. The charge was one penny to anyone selling a web of woollen cloth, a hide, cake of tallow, crock of butter, load of cheese, fish, soap, oysters, lemons or timber. The sale of a lamb or a web of drugget cost a ha’penny. On week-days (as opposed to fair days) the tolls were greatly reduced. By the end of the nineteenth century these charges had disappeared and the markets improved accordingly. There was also by then a fair green on which fairs were held once a month. Boats could navigate the Quoile almost to the town, but with difficulty, and most chose to use a quay about a mile downstream. Potatoes and grain were exported; timber, coal and slates imported. Lime was brought by sea from Larne and often as not sold at the quayside.       A few miles north of Downpatrick lay the village of Kilmore where four fairs were held annually. However by the early 1800s these had died out and it was described as ‘a wretched place containing a Roman Catholic chapel and thirty-five houses, four of them almost ruins’. Nearby Crossgar however was by this time clearly ‘on the up’ thanks to the efforts of a Mr Thompson who then owned it. In 1829 Thompson built a market house and established weekly markets and monthly fairs where cattle and all general commodities were offered for sale. The lower part of the market house was used for weighing and the upper part as a carpenter’s shop and grain store. The fairs flourished and were held regularly until the middle of the twentieth century. Crossgar’s markets were noted for the quality of the butter, eggs and fowl sold at them. Of the remaining towns Killyleagh, Dromore, Castlewellan, Rathfriland and Ballynahinch all had fairs. Most had four in the early years, increasing to twelve in the nineteenth century, except Killyleagh which had never more than four at any time. All had hiring fairs. Killyleagh had a busy harbour through which butter, grain and potatoes were exported. Coal, lime and timber were imported. The town had just two hiring fairs in the year held on the eleventh days of April and October. They stopped years ago (according to G.H. Bassett in 1886) because ‘there was too much drinking and fighting and not enough people wanting to hire’. It is likely that young people were by then finding employment in the town’s two spinning mills and earning more than the few pounds that farm servants were earning at that time for six months work.       Dromore (according to the manuscript notes of Harris’s History of Down) had in 1557 no buildings, only some old thatched houses and a ruined church. Part of the town’s old tenth-century cross was at that time being used as a seat for the stocks. The church was later rebuilt and the cross returned to the vicinity of the church where it had originally stood as a market cross. Dromore was one of a number of places to be granted permission in the seventeenth century to hold a Saturday market and Bishop’s Fairs near the cathedral ‘where the great cross now stands.’ A bishop in those days had wide-ranging powers. He could appoint coroners and clerks of the market. He could collect market tolls and establish Courts of Piepowder to enforce fair practice in trading. He had the right of ‘pillory, tumbrell and thewr’.       By 1821 the town had 363 inhabited houses (mainly thatched) and a population of 1,860. The Lagan provided the power for a number of mills and as elsewhere in the province linen was woven in hundreds of individual homes. The Market Square had a court house with a market house underneath in which meal and potatoes were sold, and shambles nearby for the sale of meat. By 1885 there was a new market place and a new town hall. Markets were held on Wednesdays and Saturdays and there was a fair on the second Saturday of each month. Dromore was by this time a manufacturing town with up to a dozen factories giving employment to hundreds of women and girls. There would have been few women seeking work at that time in the town’s two hiring fairs.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extracts regarding County Armagh: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 Forthcoming extracts regarding County Down: Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 |

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