The Last Day of Holsworthy's Old Market - a Piece of Social History
In 2014 they closed Holsworthy’s old livestock market and opened up a big new auction centre on the outskirts of the ancient town on the Devon-Cornwall border. You have to move with the times, but it was not the most popular of moves at the time - because the old market was much closer to the centre of town and each Wednesday that was reflected in the huge numbers of people who would visit.
They’d been doing just that four hundreds of years - and the triangle shaped market square right in the centre of town was always full of stallholders and farming families out for the big day. So I took the opportunity of talking to a few people on the very last day of the old market to capture the mood for an article I wrote for the Western Morning News - which you can see below… But first why not have a listen to the podcast - which I guess is now part of the region’s oral history.
"I don't know why they've changed un' - all this is still pretty modern to me - I remember when the market here was just open fields and pens, not all these buildings..."
So said 87-year-old farmer John Bowden who was attending the last Holsworthy Livestock Market to take part on the old town site yesterday before the whole agricultural enterprise moves lock, stock, mooing and bleating barrel to the new multi-million pound facility a mile away.
Mr Bowden, whose family have farmed at Bridgerule on the Devon- Cornwall county border for five generations, says he will continue attending the new market, but like many among the hundreds who attended the final livestock auction yesterday, Mr Bowden was there primarily to remember past agrarian glories.
The old Holsworthy Market cafe
"I've been coming here since I was a small boy," he told the Western Morning News. "The market is everything - it's where the people who live out in the middle of nowhere come in to civilisation once a week."
With that he was off to meet his wife in the Waitrose supermarket which, in future, will be doing commercial battle with a Tesco which is due to be built on the old site along with new homes.
Signs of changing times are burgeoning everywhere across the West Country peninsula, but until yesterday the weekly Holsworthy market was one of the few visual, cultural, elements left that firmly connected the 21st Century with pre-medieval times.
We must move with the times... If those words could have been heard once in the fried bacon fug of the market cafe yesterday, they could have been heard a thousand times. While so many of the older men and women congregated around the cattle and sheep pens were there to remember, all seemed to agree that it was a good thing that Kivell's, the livestock auctioneers, had put their weight and energy behind the new market with the help of the town council, district authority and other organisations and bodies.
But big business was not what yesterday was all about - the smaller commerce of selling a few bullocks here, a few hoggets there and a milking cow or three, provided the main thrust of proceedings.
That, and the memories...
Graham Jasper, of HR Jasper & Son, Launceston, said his family had been buying sheep at Holsworthy for the past 60 years - and they buy an awful lot of woolly beasts: "Over those years we've bought hundreds of thousands of sheep here - if not millions. We slaughter about 10,000 lambs a week. We sell them right across the country - and send them for export.
"West Country agriculture has altered but it's doing pretty well - but I've had plenty of good times here. I remember when Peter Kivell's son (David, now one of the main directors) was born there some cattle down there and when it was put down under the hammer it went down to David Kivell - on the very day he was born."
Peter Charles Kivell joined me for a chat with another retired director Arthur Rowland: "I was third generation - my father was pretty active in the business and his father William Thomas started it all in 1885," said Mr Kivell. "They started from very humble beginnings - there were little country markets in every other village - but they gradually closed down and they centralised things here.
"It was a two-day market just after the War but eventually with all the restrictions we've had to concentrate just on the one day. When I came out of the Air Force in 1945 I came straight into the business - with not a day off. I had to learn the trade and take some exams, but then I became an assistant to my father.My son David is now over there selling the beef cattle. He's got microphones and computers - we had to rely on a strong voice - didn't we Arthur?"
Mr Rowland, who joined the firm in 1955 as a "rock bottom clerk" and worked his way up from there to become a senior partner, told me: "Farmers seemed to have a lot more time when I first started - the cattle market would be absolutely full of people on the Wednesday. They'd all congregate here - meet their pals and have a good old chat - but that seems to have become a bit of a thing of the past now. Everyone's in a hurry...
"It was more of a family thing back in those days - the wives would go up the town and the farmers would come down here."
"A lot has changed," added Mr Kivell. "But it's still all down to the man with the hammer. It's all about being able to anticipate the bids because you know - through experience - what the thing is worth. If you know roughly what it's worth, you are halfway home. The vendors will have faith in you in fixing a reserve - the buyer will have faith in you because he knows you've got a genuine bid - and the world goes on nice and sweet."
"I would certainly agree with all that but I also think it is important that you keep a happy atmosphere going in the sale-ring," smiled Mr Rowland. "Keep things lighthearted and jolly... Because they are the ones parting with the money and we are the ones taking it."
"There is a social element - the farmers come in not only to do business but to meet their neighbours - sometimes it's the only time they see them for a week," added Mr Kivell. "Things are going extremely well as you can see by the number of people here today. It will go from strength to strength - we got the tools and we will try and make it work properly."
In the dairy cattle sales ring Kivells director Mark Bromell was preparing to put a number of beasts under the hammer: "It's a day of mixed feelings," he told me. "We've got a big future in that wonderful facility up the road - but equally there's over 100 years of history here and I've been coming here ever since I was in a pushchair and all my family before me - so there's a lot of attachments.
"We've got one family here today which spans four generations - and there's a lot of people here who will be sad to see the old market go with all its good times and trades. We've built Holsworthy up into one of the biggest dairy livestock markets in the country and we have a very good reputation for farmers' own home bred stock and we have buyers who come from all over the country to buy into that quality.
"I've spent many hours of my life standing up there on that rostrum selling cattle - and, yes, when I slam that last hammer down later it is going to be a very strange feeling. We're giving it a miss next week to move into the new place - but we will be selling again on September 3rd."
In the market cafe, where these words have been written, hundreds upon hundreds of men and women queued for lunch yesterday - their numbers swelled by entire families who'd brought children along to witness the historic occasion.
As a nice, smiling, woman called Margaret clears the remains of one reporter's all day breakfast away she grins the kindliest Devon grin imaginable and tells me: "Yes, we are busier than usual - a lot busier - but it is is an occasion isn't it? Sad. But then, things must move on."
And in those last four words she effectively sums up the closing of one big valuable chapter in the West Country's long, green, rustic, rural, agricultural, enviable, colourful, wonderful, history.
A journalist’s breakfast at the old market
Scene from the new market just before it was used for the first time
