DAVID RICHARDSON
DAVID RICHARDSON
Nostalgia and boyhood
memories as
Norwichs livestock
market bows to
the inevitable
and shuts its doors
Norwich City Councils decision not to re-open the Saturday livestock market after foot-and-mouth is another blow to country life. My regret probably sounds hollow, given that we seldom use the market.
Like many more East Anglian farmers we now run a stockless farm, so have little need of it. But the market was vital to me in my early life and, out of nostalgia alone, I am saddened by its likely demise. I say "likely" because some local farmers are mounting a bid to try to save it. I am bound to say that negative noises coming out of City Hall suggest their chances are slim.
If my suspicions are correct, a tradition going back hundreds of years will end. There has been a weekly livestock market in Norwich for centuries. Indeed, an ancient charter obliges the city fathers to hold a market so long as there is need of one. But the present council deems the declining number of stock sold, combined with the potentially crippling cost of complying with DEFRAs new anti-F&M bio-security measures, as legitimate ways out of what it regards as an expensive anachronism.
So, even the capital of Norfolk, Englands premier farming county, where 12% or more of gross domestic product comes from farming, behaves like other urban communities. The livestock farmers of Norfolk will be forced either to sell direct to abattoirs or transport their animals to Newark, 100 miles away, or Colchester, 80 miles away. Where is the animal welfare lobby when you need it?
But as I contemplate the demolition of the "new" market opened in 1960, and its redevelopment for offices or flats, I cast my mind back to the old market in the city centre that I knew as a child. Nothing pleased me more on Saturday mornings than to go there with my father. I would trot around behind him as he went first to the dairy cow sale, then to the fat cattle and finally the pigs. We were involved in all of those sectors in those days and he needed to keep up to date with prices.
There was contact with other farmers, of course, and at lunchtime we went to a coffee stall for a cup of tea, a cheese roll and a currant bun. Not exactly exciting nosh but I looked forward to those rolls and buns far more than their quality deserved. They were part of the Saturday experience that I enjoyed so much.
So it was that when I was 10 I persuaded my father to sell me my first pig. It was a hire purchase deal. I paid him for the pig and the feed it consumed after the animal was sold at Norwich market. The little sty he loaned me was rent-free. The first pig sold well leaving me a clear profit of £10. I became more ambitious after that and finished two pigs that left me £8 each, then three that only managed £5 each because of the notorious pig price cycle. Undaunted, I had four next time. But one of them died giving me a timely but painful lesson.
By the time I was 12 I had decided to produce weaner pigs. My observations at the market suggested blue-and-whites would sell best, so I bought a few Wessex gilts and borrowed one of fathers Large White boars. It became a matter of pride for me to have some of the smartest and cleanest eight-week-old pigs on the market that also made among the top prices.
By the time I was 15 I had a dozen or 14 sows and would have a litter there at least every second Saturday. Norwich market was like a business school for me and I shall never forget the lessons I learned there.
By the late 1950s increasingly heavy traffic in the city centre made it impossible for the market to continue and the city council built a smart new market near the outskirts of the city. It was opened with great fanfare in 1960. Since then trade has slowly run down and DEFRAs 20-day rules have hastened the demise that was probably inevitable.
All the arguments about stable doors being shut after the F&M horses have bolted have been tried and ignored. Even the inconsistencies between England and Scotland, where movement of individual animals is permitted even after the introduction of new stock, cannot apparently be ironed out. Finished stock, it is argued, should, for welfare reasons, be sold direct to abattoirs and while choice of outlet may be reduced there could be a case for that. How finishers will acquire the store animals they need in future is anybodys guess. And opportunities for keen young men to get a toehold in farming will be denied. Norwich market will surely not be the only one forced to prematurely close its weighbridges.
One auctioneer, bemoaning the potential loss of local colour a market provides, suggested, tongue in cheek I think, that he might apply for a lottery grant to mount a pretend market each Saturday as a tourist attraction. Hed probably get it too. It might even rival Disneyland.