CARDIFFREMEMBERED Old street market flourished with goods, singers and shows

CARDIFF is a city of change so we are told, but one place that has changed very little since I was a young lad is the Central Market.

Cardiff is first mentioned as a “villa mercatoria” or market town in a 14th-century document and the earliest covered market was below the old town hall in High Street.

There was a time when markets were held in Frederick Street and St Mary Street, and in 1835 the New Market was built on land adjoining the old County Gaol adjacent to its present site.

Four years earlier at the gaol, on August 13, 1831, Dic Penderyn had been publicly hanged for his said part in the Merthyr Tydfil industrial riots.

Alderman John Winstone, recalling the old gaol in 1883, said: “Nearly adjoining the gaol was what was called The Drop.

“The street entrance to the place of execution was in St Mary Street (the same as the entrance of our present market place).

“It had, from St Mary Street, a very ugly appearance, with its bare, neglected walls, cross beam and platform.

“It was certainly a relief to have it removed.”

The Central Market foundation stone was laid in 1890 by Alderman David Jones and the market was opened officially on May 8, 1891, by the Lady Mayoress, the Marchioness of Bute, and the Western Mail reporter claimed it to be “one of the best in the country”.

Some Cardiffians will remember the open market on The Hayes, I certainly do.

And a Mr D Condren in a letter to a local paper back in 1945 wrote that it was a flourishing place where “scores of barrows and stalls were loaded with goods of every description” and “there were stalls selling curtains, cast off clothing, miscellaneous pieces of