Market Place (Douglas)

Description: Market Place stood on the quayside in Douglas on the east coast of the Isle of Man (NGR 23821 47531). Brown's Popular Guide to the Isle of Man of 1876 says, "Douglas market is generally a busy place during the summer season, but more particularly on Saturday mornings, when the neatly dressed wives and daughters of the Manx farmers come from homesteads far and wide to display their tempting produce to the public eye, and, we are sure, not without gaining more than golden opinions. And who can begrudge the fair and buxom dames their well-earned profits, when it is considered that some of them come from such distant parishes as Jurby, Bride, Andreas, and Lezayre...These "guardians of the soil" stand in rows, "rank behind rank," and do a thriving business in butter, eggs, poultry, Manx cheese, and other dairy produce. In front of them, and flanked by St. Matthew's Chapel, are a score or two of butchers' stalls...Between these and the Quay are placed a goodly number of stalls, on which various kinds of fruit and vegetable produce are displayed, and from this point a long line of country carts, well supplied with agricultural produce...Facing these...are the "bonny fish wives" of Mona, with a goodly supply of ocean's gifts of the ordinary English kinds, and a few Manx natives, whose names sound strange to English ears, amongst them being callig and blocken, which are both plentiful." (p.29)

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