Then & Now

It’s not easy for a rural market town to remain vibrant and still keep in touch with its past but northallerton is doing just that, reports martin pilkington.

- Martin Pilkington

MARKET TOWNS became significant in their locality because people from near and sometimes far would gather there to buy and sell goods. Modern shopping habits are now threatening that raison d’être, which for Northallerton began in earnest in the twelfth century. No wonder the town is fighting back. ‘The Bishops of Durham, who were granted much of Allertonshire by the Crown, established Northallerton,’ explains Jennifer Allison of the Northallerton & District Local History Society, ‘and built a castle and church and obtained a very early market charter for it in 1127. The way the high street developed with its well-known wide open area was to accommodate the market, with what are known as burgage plots, laid out all the way down the main street.’ That medieval layout is still discernible in places.

‘It was a market centre for its own area as there were other little market towns all around,’ she says. ‘At the end of the Middle Ages, Northallerton only had a population of about 600 people. Somewhat later in Elizabethan times the market becomes more and more important, with the droving of cattle here from the north significant. At one time Northallerton had a massive cattle market.’