Who’ll walk the fields with us to town,
In an old coat and a faded gown?
The colonnade is a little ramshackle, a hotch-potch of medieval interpretations of the same idea, the balconies overhanging a covered and flagstoned walkway offering shade from the morning sun. Within the fabric of this colonnade are centuries of mercantile activity, the buying and selling of almost everything this small bastide village required for its subsistence and existence. What was cultivated and nurtured, woven or fabricated, will have come from the surrounding countryside and traded under these balconies – only occasionally more exotic treats will have come from more exotic climes further afield, with a price to match. The fine balance between the population and its needs holding firm for hundreds of years, just like the columns supporting the balconies above.
The 20th century’s relentless drive for economies of scale eventually caught up with this small community and the trade drifted away to the larger towns and cities, the colonnade losing its purpose, but not its beauty. Slowly, as the current century struggles with its purpose, this little corner of someone else’s world is slowly coming back to life. Just like the market in our own town, this one too is becoming the hub of the community once again – is something happening with the way we shop?
‘Market Day’ by Mary Webb (1881 – 1927)
Who’ll walk the fields with us to town,
In an old coat and a faded gown?
We take our roots and country sweets
Where high walls shade the steep old streets,
And golden bells and silver chimes
Ring up and down the sleepy times.
The morning mountains smoke like fires;
The sun spreads out his shining wires;
The mower in the half-mown leasur
Sips his tea and takes his pleasure.
Along the lanes slow waggons amble;
The sad-eyed calves awake and gamble;
The foal that lay so sorrowful
Is playing in the grasses cool.
By slanting ways, in slanting sun,
Through startled lapwings now we run
Along the pale green hazel-path,
Through April’s lingering aftermath
Of lady’s smock and lady’s slipper;
We stay to watch a nesting dipper.
The rabbits eye us while we pass,
Out of the sorrel-crimson grass;
The blackbird sings, without a fear,
Where honeysuckle horns blow clear –
Cool ivory stained with true vermilion;
And here, within a silk pavilion,
Small caterpillars lie at ease.
The endless shadows of the trees
Are painted purple and cobalt;
Grandiloquent, the rook-files halt,
Each one aware of you and me,
And full of conscious dignity.
Our shoes are golden as we pass
With pollen from the pansied grass.
Beneath an elder – set anew
With large clean plates to catch the dew –
On fine white cheese and bread we dine:
The clear brook-water tastes like wine.
If all folk lived with labour sweet
Of their own busy hands and feet,
Such marketing, it seems to me,
Would make an end of poverty.
Come and gander at all the beautiful books published this week. Whether you’re jetting off to somewhere sunny, or looking for something to occupy the kids – we’ve got you covered. And when you get bored of reading, books also double-up as fans!
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From Amber
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