Many were not happy and the scene that followed was one of chaos with crowds shouting, fighting and running along the streets, hurling stones through windows and generally causing trouble.
In 1869 Wastel Brisco, owner of Newtown Hall Estate, instructed his agent, Mr Sturkey, to have some of his properties in High Street and Market Street demolished in order to build ‘a new and imposing Market Hall for the town’.
The Market opened on Tuesday 20th December 1870. On the opening day there were stalls selling butter, eggs, cheese bacon, fruit vegetables, cakes, hosiery, haberdashery, grocery, ironmongery, saddlery, shoes, and crockery. Mr Edmund of Newtown Gas Works made the first purchase, buying a plump goose for his tea
In 1878 Mr C Jones was charged with stealing ten penknives, earrings, rings, lockets and other items of jewellery from the Market Hall in Newtown. After a local trial the Bench ordered the prisoner to be whipped with twelve strokes and the sent to goal for a month
On the 19th August 1881 an annual tea was prepared in Newtown Market Hall for the pupils of Llanllwchaiarn Sunday School. The children met at school and walked in procession to the Market Hall where tea and cakes was provided for 400 people. The Newtown Brass and Reed Band played music for the guests.
Wastel Brisco immediately offered the Market Hall to the Newtown Local Board for either sale or rent. The asking price was £5000. Many people in the town felt the amount he was asking was too much and they were outraged that they hadn’t been consulted over decisions like where the Market Hall had been built and how much it would cost. Unable to come to an agreement on the ‘Market Hall Question’ a poll took place in March 1871 asking ratepayers in the Newtown district if they wanted to purchase the building. Canvassing on both sides was rowdy with many accusations of cheating. Eventually, the people voted in favour of the Newtown Local Board buying or renting the hall from Mr Brisco. Many were not happy and the scene that followed was one of chaos with crowds shouting, fighting and running along the streets, hurling stones through windows and generally causing trouble.
The Local Board now sought to come to a financial arrangement with Wastel Brisco. Many letters were written and offers made but it was to be another fifty years before the matter was finally resolved.
When the First World War ended in 1918 the country’s great estates were left with huge land taxes to pay. Newtown Hall estate was no exception. Much of its property had to be put on the market to raise the cash to pay what was owed. With so much property being put on the market at the same time prices were seriously deflated. The Urban District Council was finally able to buy Newtown Market Hall for £4,273 12s 8d. Less than they had been asked to pay fifty years earlier.
After years of underinvestment, the building declined into a very poor state of repair. A local community organisation, Mid Wales Food and Land Trust, raised the capital funding for the restoration of the building and in 2014 Powys County Council handed the building over to the Trust on a 99 year lease. Newtown Market Hall was fully restored with funding from Heritage Lottery Fund, Big Lottery and Welsh Government and reopened as a public market on 4th August 2015.
Did you know?
The Market opened on Tuesday 20th December 1870.
Wastel Brisco immediately offered the Market Hall to the Newtown Local Board for either sale or rent. The asking price was £5000.
Unable to come to an agreement on the ‘Market Hall Question’ a poll took place in March 1871 asking ratepayers in the Newtown district if they wanted to purchase the building. Chaos ensued, windows were broken.
In 1941, during the second world war, the Market Hall was requisitioned for military use. A partition wall was erected down the middle of the building an the eastern side of the hall was used for storage.
The Full Story…
Newtown’s ‘Old Market Hall’ stood in Broad Street between the present day Castle Vaults and the Nat West Bank. It was built around 1570 and demolished in 1852. No photographs of it are known to exist but it does appear in an engraving of Broad Street made in about 1848.
In about 1570 the Lord of the Manor of Cedewain, John Pryce of Newtown Hall, granted Thomas Turner, one of the towns’ Bailiffs, the right to collect the market tolls. For this privilege Turner was required to pay an annual rent of twenty six shillings and eight pence and also to build at his own expense, on the site of an old court house in the middle of Broad Street, a booth hall, tolls shoppe and a prison house. This he did. The open space below the hall was used as the town’s market place for corn, butter, cheese and wool. For more than 280 years this building was the centre of Newtown’s market, but with the rapid expansion of the handloom weaving industry in the early nineteenth century the old market hall quickly became inadequate for the weekly sales of wool and flannel. In 1832, under the leadership of William Pugh of Brynllwarch, Kerry, local businessmen got together to erect a fine new building at the end of Broad Street, to serve as the town’s flannel exchange. Although purpose built, the building only operated as a flannel exchange on Thursdays which meant it was also regularly used as a public hall. In 1890 it was altered and enlarged to enable the front of the building to become a post office.