'Hiring Fairs and Market Places' by May Blair, published by Appletree Press

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extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair.

COUNTY LONDONDERRY

Fairs were usually reported in the local papers thus informing farmers of the price of livestock as well as the price of workers. The Coleraine Chronicle of 13 May 1876 says of the Coleraine Annual Cattle Fair And Hiring Market:
What was formerly the chief fair of the year for the sale of black cattle and sheep and the hiring of domestic and agricultural servants was held in Coleraine yesterday (Friday). The weather was splendid and the attendance of substantial farmers and their wives and the almost equally well-dressed crowd of young men and women was immense. The market for ‘helps’, as the Americans say, and for cattle was large. The hiring fair will show more animation today (Saturday) when it is quite possible the value placed upon the services of agricultural labourers and domestic servants yesterday will be virtually toned down to what employers are content to concede. Stout young men told us yesterday that they thought £9 in the half-year ending 12th November for hands who could do almost anything on the farm was about a high average, £10 for the same period being only in a few instances granted. Boys got from £4 to £6; girls and young women £4 10[s] 0 to £5 5[s] 0 for a similar period…

The area south of Coleraine was renowned for its weavers, its bleach greens, its lapping greens and drying houses. Credit for this went to the Merchant Taylors and the Scotch and English settlers who ‘by their incessant industry and good conduct’ raised the parish to its then wealth through the linen trade. In spite of this there were at least thirty badged paupers in the area. The badge, made of tin and stamped AHADOWEY, KILREA or wherever they came from, indicated that they were ‘respectable’ beggars and as such were entitled to beg throughout the parish. Badging ceased in the 1840s with the advent of the workhouse.
There was a good linen market in Kilrea (a Mercers’ town) and one was attempted in Garvagh (an Ironmongers’ town) but the latter did not succeed. Each of these towns was but a cluster of miserable huts when taken over by their respective London Companies in the seventeenth century. Their agents first built fortified houses for themselves and then proceeded to establish markets and fairs and build towns, but again their efforts were hampered by continual attacks and uprisings.
Kilrea started off with weekly markets and just one fair held in September. By the early nineteenth century it had eight fairs. It was renowned far and wide for its ‘lively horse markets’. Large quantities of yarn were sold and there was good trade in second-hand clothes. Every second market was a linen market at which coarse narrow webs of brown linen were sold. A corn market was held every Thursday. As time went on fairs increased and were held regularly on the second and fourth Wednesday of the month until they ceased in the twentieth century. The Wednesday market still takes place but today it is held on the old Fair Green in Maghera Street.
By 1830 the town had around 900 inhabitants, many of whom had been weavers but their looms had by then fallen idle. During the next decade the Mercers’ Company sank a well, installed a pump and added several buildings to the town. A man was employed to look after the pump and keep the cistern full of water. His wages of seven shillings a week were recouped from the townspeople in the form of a quarterly levy ranging from one shilling for a householder to five shillings for a hotelkeeper. Today the war memorial occupies the site of the old town pump. The new buildings included a hotel called The Mercers’ Arms which had good stabling and rooms for the company’s agent, bailiff, magistrates etc.; also a dispensary, police barracks and market house with – surprisingly, since the cottage industry was in decline – an upper room for sealing linen webs. This had previously been done in a loft in Bridge Street.
Agents were strict and demanded a high standard from their tenants, who had to whitewash their houses regularly, both inside and out. A lease was sometimes granted for six months only, its renewal depending on the cleanliness and behaviour of the tenant, who was expected to uphold the law and act in a respectable manner at all times. A lease could be withdrawn if a tenant was discovered to be a habitual drinker or to quarrel with his neighbour. The Mercers’ Company prohibited dancing and forbade all nocturnal meetings, believing these would lower moral standards. They carried this to great lengths. At that time the people of the area were in the habit of meeting at a stream called the Clattering Ford, sitting down, washing their feet and discussing the state of the markets in Kilrea and Garvagh. Innocent enough you might think, but the Mercers’ Company put a stop to it, seeing in it something that might lead to undesirable behaviour. They also put a stop to card playing, dice throwing and cock fighting. Well-behaved tenants might expect to have their rents reduced or their holdings enlarged. However changes were on the way. Towards the end of the nineteenth century Parliament passed several acts – unfavourable to landlords – thus enabling tenants to buy their land. By the outbreak of the First World War the changeover was almost complete. The London Companies, however, continued their good work albeit in an increasingly charitable role. The final severance took place in the 1960s when the Mercers’ Company decided to break their links with the Irish Society. At the same time tenants in Kilrea were given the opportunity to buy out the leases on their premises. Most did so. In the beginning Garvagh had a weekly market held every Friday and just four fairs which were established by George Canning, the first agent for the Ironmongers’ Company. The number of fairs increased to twelve in the nineteenth century. They were notorious for their faction fights which continued to the late nineteenth century while stick fighting continued until the 1920s.
It was on the (Newtown-) Limavady–Kilrea route by which pork, butter and other merchandise were conveyed to Belfast and it was on a road favoured by cattle jobbers taking their animals to Larne and other ports en route to England and Scotland. These started off with anything from fifty to eighty animals, buying or selling as circumstances dictated along the way. The town had the usual markets for dairy produce, grain and pork but the commodities sold were said to be very limited, mainly due to the fact that there was no market house or shelter for the storage of goods as no proprietor had up until then devoted his attention to improving the town. However in 1829 along came a certain Archibald Fisher who built a new pork and grain market, together with two dwelling houses intended for shops, some sheds and storehouses, and a black hole [lock-up] with an upper storey for holding petty sessions. The markets improved immediately, particularly for the sale of dairy produce, pork, yarn and flax; also churns, tubs, milk strainers, books, crockery, ropes, baskets and much, much more.

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