Wakefield Market

According to www.oldtowns.co.uk Leland, in his ‘Itinerary,' written about 1536, describes Wakefield as ‘a very quick market-towne and meately large ; well served of flesch and fisch, both from the se and by rivers, whereof divers be thereabout at hande, so that al vitaile is very gode chepe there. A right honest man shal fare well for two pens a meale!  I'm a big believer in visiting markets, to find out what a town is really like, and to get cheap food - but I couldn't get a meal for less than 1p - maybe I'm not a right honest man?


Wakefield Market was rehoused in 2008, and it was a controversial move. Awsome or Awful? was the question the BBC asked at the time.  I love old markets and I visited this new market with some apprehension.  However I feel the new market is definitely worth a visit.  For a start, the rhubarb here was less than a £1 a pound!

In the outside market look out for Debra Lowe, who sells home-made falafel.

Inside the market there's even a demonstration kitchen:

When I called on Saturday Easby's (soon to be featured in this blog) were doing Rhubarb recipes and tasting sessions:

There's a very good cheese monger, Cryer and Stott:

Cheeses included Yorkshire Fine Fettle, a British ewe's milk cheese made by Shepherds Purse Cheeses. It used to be called Yorkshire Feta, but it changed its name after an EU ruling meant that all Feta cheese must be produced in Greece!

They also sell cottage cheese, cream, yogurts and fresh curds.  They've got a good selection of preserves and I even spotted a jar of one of my favourites - Henderson's Yorkshire Relish:

They'd laid on a good selection of rhubarb products for the festival:

including Ruby Gold, a ewe’s milk cheese is made with Wakefield rhubarb, which was a gold medal winner at the Nantwich Cheese Show in 2005.


I didn't expect to find a shop selling African food in Wakefield Market:

Here you can buy African staples like Boerewors sausage:

 Biltong:

and Maize Meal:

The lady that served me also pointed out that they still sold OMO:

a washing powder (which Wikipedia assured me what no longer for sale in the UK) which I remember as a kid!  I tried to find out when Unilever stopped selling it in the UK  and didn't realise there were other uses for OMO other than washing (see here)! 

Anyway this is a food blog, so I shouldn't be talking about non food items, which is a pity because I wanted to tell you about the card shop where I bought 4 birthday cards for a £1 in the market...

I had to wait a long time before I could get a shot of S and A Cable butchers without a large queue of people getting in the way!

They sold rhubarb sausage:

a good combination in my opinion.

There was also a steady queue of customers for Peter's Fresh Farm Eggs:

who sold barn, free range and duck eggs.

Last, but not least, I visited Feather's Confectionery: 

It's run by Carol and her daughter Pauline.  They  seemed to sell every sweet you could ever wish for!  They told me their best selling item are midget gems.

Who could not resist a sign saying "Get your rhubarb sweets here?

They even had rhubarb and custard sweets in a low sugar version :-).

For the more upmarket customers (not me then) they sold rhubarb and custard truffles:

They also sold Pontefract Cakes:

which reminded me to put Sunday, 10th July 2011 in my diary, it's Pontefract Liquorice Festival!

Web: www.wakefield.gov.uk/CultureAndLeisure/Markets/Wakefield