FREE MARKET TOWN GEMS POSTCARDS
Ideally placed in the Vale of Pickering ’twixt York and the coast, Malton is Yorkshire’s self-styled capital of food. David Behrens reports.
IT REMAINS the administrative centre of Ryedale but the old Town Hall, from whose stone balcony the results of elections were once proclaimed, is a bar and restaurant now.
Its repurposing is typical of a town for which food is not only a way of life, but life itself.
The Hans Christian Andersen architecture of the former civic headquarters, and the butter market which abuts it, dominates the market place. In the 18th century, this was the bread basket of Yorkshire, and it grew fat on the proceeds of the dairy produce that passed through it.
Fast forward 300 years and Malton is once again the Food Capital of Yorkshire, a title invented by its own marketing people. It has been, like the rest of the country, on a bread and water diet these last few months. But with the summer has come a new appetite and something of a reawakening.
There is no point denying that life has been tough for the town’s vast community of butchers, bakers, caterers and assorted other traders. Yet paradoxically, a few of them report having never been busier.
“The thing is, people had always wanted to shop locally but for various reasons they ended up going to Morrisons,” says Tom Naylor-Leyland, of the Visit Malton community interest company. “Now they are having to reconsider. No one wants to queue with hundreds of people in a supermarket if they don’t have to.”
Mr Naylor-Leyland, heir to the Fitzwilliam Estate, which commissioned the old Town Hall in 1749 and now runs shops, pubs, hotels and farms in the area, believes that market towns such as this will become social and business hubs for the postpandemic population.
“I hope and I predict that market towns will be more relevant than ever after Corona because people have realised
that you can work remotely. So why wouldn’t you enjoy the quality of life that places like this bring. I hope it will be a lasting phenomenon.”
He was taken aback, he says, at how quickly Malton’s traders changed their bricks-and-mortar business models into online operations at the start of the quarantine.
Florian Poirot, a pastry chef who runs a patisserie in the Talbot Yard food court, has managed even to arrange the export of macarons to his native France.
“I’m not saying things haven’t been challenging. Yet greengrocers and butchers have said they are busier than they’ve ever been,” says Mr NaylorLeyland. “Clearly for restaurants it has not been so easy. But what I could not have predicted is that online businesses are also now looking for bigger premises here, even though their sales are mostly on the internet, because they want a nice showroom for their products. And an attractive market town with rents that are much cheaper than the centre of York for instance, seems to be a good fit.”
It was the popularity of Malton amongst food and drink producers and retailers that inspired its reinvention as
Yorkshire’s Food Capital, and its calendar extends now to specialist stalls, festivals and even a French-style marathon, in which the runners pause for food and drink on the route.
Most of those have been cancelled this year, although the Christmas markets, which attracted 20,000 visitors last year, may still go ahead in some form. And the open air food market, on the second Saturday of each month, has returned.
Mr Naylor-Leyland characterises today’s Malton as “a town of makers”, but while its reputation has grown over the last few years, helped by ambitious initiatives like the collaboration between local food producers and Claridge’s for a “Malton in Mayfair” event two years ago, the town remains a political backwater. The former occupants of the Town Hall have moved half a mile up the road, and while this remains the principal settlement within the Ryedale district it wields less clout as a tourism destination than neighbouring York and Scarborough.
That, however, is a power balance ripe for renegotiation. Last month, North Yorkshire’s seven district councils, Scarborough and Ryedale among them, were told by the Government that they may have to be sacrificed if the county is to benefit from devolution
It is an exercise that calls for “creative thinking”, says Keane Duncan, a native of Malton who leads Ryedale Council and sits on the county authority.
Ideally placed in the Vale of
Pickering, between the coast, the North York Moors and York itself, Malton looks towards York and Scarborough in its marketing, says Mr Duncan. “The three authorities have a close affinity with each other and if they were to be combined in a single body, you’d have a tourism powerhouse that nobody could compete with anywhere else in the country.”
Whatever happens, he will stay put. “It’s always difficult in rural areas to attract and retain younger people – they tend to go away and study and they end up in cities. But I love it here
– it’s my town. It’s the sort of place where everybody knows everyone and you know who’s going to be serving you when you go shopping.”