Hereford's Butter Market

This report was produced by a member, Mo Burns in 2001, when she was studying for an MA in Food Policy at Thames Valley. This report was prompted by the publication of the Countryside Agency’s initiative ‘Market Towns: 21st Century Service Centres’.

It looks at Hereford’s Butter Market in the city’s historic trading centre, the reasons for its decline and possible strategies for its regeneration.

Executive Summary

1. Britain’s 625 Covered Markets represent an under-exploited city centre retailing resource. Their imaginative refurbishment and re-branding to specialise in the sale of local produce could act as a catalyst to the regeneration of many run-down city centres.

2. Hereford’s Buttermarket is a paradigm for the wider neglect of the adjoining High Town area. Since this loss of city centre vibrancy is not unique to Hereford it is an ideal location for a pilot project to develop a blue print for a national regeneration programme.

3. Refurbishment of the Market would require charitable or other heritage grant support. Much of the building’s Victorian splendour could be restored, including its ‘handsome iron and glass roof’ (para 3.3), presently hidden beneath a low false wooden ceiling. Imaginative restoration could itself create a new vitality to the centre.

4. Hand in hand with the building’s refurbishment would be a unique re-branding of the Market to specialise in the sale of local and fresh Herefordshire produce (para 4.7). This would require the stall layout to be simplified (to allow for wider aisles and fewer but more attractive stalls).

5. A business plan would be developed that would provide financial benefits for stalls selling food, and additional benefits for those selling local produce (para 4.13). Re-branding of this nature would promote what is distinctive about Hereford – its high quality and world famous foods.

6. Such a development would yield substantial additional benefits, including:

   1. improved vitality of the adjoining city centre with improved retail confidence and general economic benefits for the community (para 4.1);

   2. improved access to local produce, and thereby an improved dialogue between Herefordshire’s rural and urban populations;

   3. enhanced attractiveness to tourists, few of whom visit the County in order to purchase its food produce (para 4.14(2));

   4. the achievement of many of the council’s national and local strategic objectives (listed at Annex A, page 8) including health improvement and city centre regeneration.

7. The proposed scheme additionally incorporates:

   1. An innovative transport strategy to enable it to compete with the perceived ease of access to supermarkets (para 4.14(5)); and

   2. A comprehensive marketing strategy that makes the refurbishment a symbol of the regeneration and re-branding of both city centre and county (para 4.14).

Introduction

1.1 This report has been prepared by Mo Burns, an MA student studying Food Policy at Thames Valley University, London as a course assignment. This report was prompted by the publication of the Countryside Agency’s initiative ‘Market Towns: 21^st Century Service Centres’.

1.2 I have looked specifically at Hereford’s Butter Market in the city’s historic trading centre, the reasons for its decline and possible strategies for its regeneration.

1.3 This report is structured as follows:

1. Introduction

2. The policy context

3. The Butter Market

4. Proposals for reform

5. Conclusions

Annex 1 ~ The policy context

• National initiatives;

• Local initiatives

The Policy Context

2.1 The Countryside Agency project is by no means the only government initiative that offers guidance to local government; there have been, in fact, a proliferation of such recommendations, reports and statutory obligations. The key national and local initiatives (which are outlined in Annex 1 below) can be summarised as having a common aim of revitalising Town Centres, with the development of food retailing being a strong theme in this context.

3. The Butter Market

3.1 If the redevelopment of the Butter Market is to be a key vehicle in the revitalisation of the City Centre, it is essential that it be viewed from the perspective of the social and cultural context, which led to its development and its recent demise.

Historical background:

3.2 In the two centuries after 1750 over 625 such market halls were built in Britain¹, representing a revolution in food retailing no less dramatic than the recent development of large out of centre supermarkets. The majority of permanent covered markets were built in the Victorian era and were intended as statements, not only of architectural and civic pride, but also of social and cultural improvement. This important and current theme has been described in the following terms:

“Market reform … was part of a revolution in both architectural form and the arrangement of public space. Unlike the twentieth-century shopping mall, the public market hall was planned as a feature of everyday urban life which went beyond commerce into the realm of human behaviour and social values. …For centuries the traditional open-air marketplace, with its occasional market house and its customary plethora of dirty wooden stalls, had stood only as the locus for commerce; it had not aspired to a higher purpose”².

3.3 Hereford’s Butter Market was built in 1857 as a result of the ‘Hereford Improvement Act’ 1854 and an architectural competition. The current hall was created, “under a handsome iron and glass roof for the sale of poultry, butcher’s meat, fish, vegetables and all other commodities usually sold in such markets…”³.

3.4 The aim of the architect of Hereford’s Butter Market was typical: “he strove not to make the new market fit into the existing townscape, but to make it stand out, to show that here in mundane Hereford was a place for lofty activities. … The public market had joined the church and the town hall as an idealised institution.”⁴.

3.5 The present vendors’ stalls were added in 1925 and have received little attention since. In fact, the building and its contents have come to be a paradigm of the decay of the town’s entire central area.

The Butter Market today

3.6 The historic comparison of the dirty and disorderly street market with the gleaming architecturally impressive covered market has a strong present day resonance—covered markets are now perceived as the shabby and disorganised relation of the spacious and clean supermarkets that have come to displace them.

3.7 The decline of these national treasures is increasing seen as a national scandal, as the Countryside Agency Report ‘Market Towns: 21^st Century Centres’ indicates (see Annex 1). The plight of Hereford’s Butter Market hall is no exception. Its interior is tired, cluttered and in need of extensive modernisation. The overall impression is of a dark, claustrophobic space, beneath a 1970’s suspended, poorly lit ceiling.

3.8 On the ground, the stalls are meanly arranged and designed; too close together for customers to shop comfortably without jostling each other. The ‘Beware of Pickpocket’ posters accentuate this cultural negative, of a crowded, dirty and run down environment.

3.9 The stalls themselves, offer the usual range of domestic items, from electrical goods, mobile phones, to clothing, with food retailing playing a minor part, numbering only nine of the approximately thirty stalls in total. Twenty years ago, five of these food stalls were run by local producers; one on a co-operative basis. Today, very few stalls remain selling identifiable amounts of local produce.

The Market’s customers and stall-holders

3.10 The broad impression of the Buttermarket’s typical customer, is of an older, traditional shopper, and the poorer of the community. The stall holders themselves, in any discussion, express great concern about the viability of the market. High rents, neglect of the market hall’s interior and a lack of vision as to its future by Herefordshire Council are their three principal complaints.

Cultural and social forces

3.11 Further reasons for the Butter Market’s devalued public image is that it appears that its food retailing role is marginal, it is hidden, and although it contains an number of excellent stalls, in the round, it is sadly an eminently forgettable shopping destination; in fact, it lacks identity. It is no longer seen as the commercial centre of High Town, and High Town is no longer used as the food-retailing centre of the city. As the covered markets’ star has dwindled, so has the supermarkets’ star risen, clearly accorded by their ability to respond to (or influence) consumer demand.

3.12 One of the major attractions in visiting a modern supermarket is the marvellous sense of space and light created by high ceilings, clever ambient lighting, and crisp clean design lines. They engender confidence in the shopper; it is difficult to be beguiled into buying in a cluttered, dirty space.

Comparisons with other covered markets

3.13 As part of the preparation of this Report, covered markets in Durham, Budapest, Cardiff and Abergavenny were visited. The general conclusion was that although all four reflected a similar neglect of fabric to Hereford’s, in the latter two encouraging attempts were being made to promote a positive and uniquely ‘local’ image. Cardiff’s indoor market clearly revels in the promoting of the Principality’s excellent local foods and Abergavenny follows its lead. In 1999, the town hosted its first food fair, which has done much to publicise and reinvigorate its local food industry and tourism. Of further interest, was the retaining of a sense of space; stalls were generally better designed and most importantly, the halls’ unique and original interiors are still visible to the public gaze. Budapest central market was visited to compare division of retailing history and its modern implications. As a large, vibrant city, but lacking sophisticated supermarkets, it was interesting to note the extraordinary similarity of its market hall interior design to many of our British versions: a metal and glass soaring gothic space. But sadly, comparisons floundered between the U.K. and European indoor food markets when comparing richness and diversity of content, with the latter’s inspirational displays of regional food and wines, spacious isles and the buzz of social interaction with serious individual and commercial sector food purchasing.

4. The Development Proposal

4.1 The national decline of market halls that this report describes, is no more inevitable than the supermarkets’ impregnability. Recently, a number of national retailers have shown a key weakness which may prove to be a potential strength for a covered market renaissance; the developing cultural and social trend of valuing localness; for unique non-mass produced products. The superstore distribution system does not lend itself to local product sourcing.

4.2 To seek to rebuild the success of the covered market based upon the promotion of local produce - primarily food, also taps into many of the national and local policy initiatives detailed in Annex 1. This proposal envisages substantial physical refurbishment of the market, not only to dramatically upgrade the facilities, but also as a symbolic demonstration of the Council’s commitment to fundamental change; a launching of a new product, fit for a new century.

4.3 Success with the proposed scheme requires the council to take seriously the key cultural and social reasons for the markets decline, and the relative success of supermarkets. Major retailers go to considerable expense to promote their ‘positive’ messages; but, as has been frequently noted, the actuality of the supermarket shopping experience is not, in fact, matched by their advertising image. Whilst they may be clean and have modern display cabinets and bright lights, they are not particularly convenient and certainly not cheap in social, or often fresh food, terms. Visits often require frustrating car journeys, parking and queuing; they do not easily cater for the car-less in society; have ‘unfriendly’ minimal staff/customer ratios and the aisles are designed for speeding trolleys rather than as meeting places.

4.4 The approach this report advocates, therefore, seeks to build on the many positive attributes of covered markets; accessibility, high staff/customer ratios, value for money products and sophisticated social environments where much meeting and talking occurs. Covered markets have the potential to offer a wide range of quality goods, and operate symbiotically with other facilities of a town centre, - shops, banks, libraries and cafes, etc. This approach ensures that we learn the promotional messages of the supermarkets, by taking seriously current cultural trends and social mores. In sum, it seeks to identify and commercially exploit the unique aspects of the covered market, which cannot be replicated by the multinational supermarkets.

Structural refurbishment

4.5 No formal business plan has as yet been prepared for these proposals, but clearly major capital investment needs to be found for redesign and renovation, possibly launched via an architectural competition, mirroring the success of that strategy with the national award winning ‘Café @ All Saints’ church project in High Street, (and indeed the original Butter Market competition). Since the building is Listed Grade II, and in a conservation area, Local Authority grant aid should be available as well as capital support from English Heritage and the more common sources (such as Lottery Regeneration funds).

4.6 The renovation would accentuate the positive social and cultural aspects of the market and address the negatives. Its greatest attribute being its location and its architectural uniqueness, albeit that this is currently largely hidden. It indeed has the potential to become Hereford’s ‘Tate Modern’ in regeneration terms. Key recommendations would include:

• Removal of the false ceiling to expose the original space and main light source.

• Rationalisation of the main entrance hall, which may require planning permission and listed building consent.

• Creation of a mezzanine level to accommodate a café/more stalls. That would have the benefit of releasing stall space on the ground, thus improving shopping environment.

• Complete redesign of the stalls and stall layout.

Re-branding the Butter Market

4.7 The Butter Market needs a unique identity, which unites its stall holders, and sets them apart from the retail competition. Many factors suggest that this identity should be as the principal retail and promotional tool of Herefordshire’s fantastic local food products. We are known, not just nationally, but globally, for our prime beef, top fruit and ciders. These are however a minute sample of what is promoted through our tourism brochures and the many other food marketing leaflets and events in the county (ie the ‘Flavours of Herefordshire’, Annex 1).

4.8 Herefordshire is, for example, the largest organic growing county in the country; the industry is sophisticated and well established, but it is not possible, so far as I am aware, to buy a single organic food product in the Butter Market at present. Indeed, very little of the produce as sold in the market is (or is promoted as) local in origin.

4.9 To achieve this change, the council will need to adopt policies, which specifically encourage the sale of local foods, and to harness its considerable publicity power to market this new development.

4.10 A key requirement, however, will be a council decision to accept lower total income from the Butter Market. This is now possible as part of the ‘Best Value’ strategy, whereby the increased use of the town centre, with the spin off benefits for such matters as law and order and the social regeneration of the city centre at large, would be justified.

4.11 The aim of the revised rental policy would be to:

1. reduce the number of stalls to allow for more shopper space and also to create improved product display opportunities for stall holders.

2. increase the number of stalls selling foodstuffs;

3. increase the number of stalls selling locally produced foodstuffs.

4.12 To this end the Council should adopt a sliding scale of rents. Rents would be retained at their current levels for existing non-foodstuff stall holders. A rent reduction would occur for stalls selling foodstuffs and an additional reduction would occur for those selling an agreed percentage of local produced foodstuffs.

4.13 This preferential system would have the effect of:

1. increasing the number of food stalls;

2. supporting the county’s small food producers by offering marketing opportunities in a prime site;

3. offering increased choice of quality local foods to regular shoppers;

4. attracting new shoppers who at present purchase at specialist food shops in other towns, farm shops, or the monthly farmers’ markets;

5. supporting tourism by re-branding Hereford a centre of excellence for local food in the West Midlands;

6. satisfying statutory obligations such as ‘Best Value’ (see Annex 1).

7. addressing the Council’s anti-poverty strategy in that fruit and vegetables sold at such stalls are generally significantly cheaper than in the superstores, if not ‘some 40 or 50 per cent cheaper’⁵ (see policy initiative ‘Low Income, Food, Nutrition and Health’ Annex 1).

The promotional package

4.14 As part of the partnership with stall holders to bring about a transformation of the Butter Market the Council will need to launch a comprehensive and focussed publicity strategy to promote the city centre and the renovated Butter Market. This will include:

1. A focussed advertising campaign (including special food events, such as an annual Hereford Food Fair or Food Festival). This would be in partnership with Herefordshire Foodlinks and other players as itemised in Annex 1.

2. Linking this campaign directly into the Council’s drive to increase tourism. As noted in Annex 1, despite the quality of the foodstuffs produced in Hereford, less than 5% of overall visitor expenditure is spent on shopping for food in this county.

3. The council, in partnership with the Health Authority, supporting local suppliers by using the Butter Market as the central sourcing point when purchasing locally grown fruit and vegetables in its schools, hospitals and social services outlets, as part of the Health Improvement Programme initiative (see Annex 1).

4. The Education department encouraging local schools to run national curriculum projects on the Market, its history and present role in promoting local produce.

5. Linking the development into Hereford’s integrated transport strategy including (for instance) a scheme to enable shoppers to fill a ‘local produce box’ at the market and then subsequently collect it from the adjoining car park or for elderly shoppers (or those without transport) to have the box delivered. This initiative would be an effective “strategy to enable better access to fruit and vegetables” within the context of ‘PAT: 13’ (see Annex 1).

6. The council should not only show vision by addressing the needs of the Butter Market, but also support a national campaign to revive all covered markets.

5. Conclusion

5.1 In order to reinvigorate the city centre, the Council must show vision and civic commitment. The loss of vitality in this area is such that a dramatic initiative is required. Whilst major rebuilding works can revitalise town centres, it is first necessary to understand the social and cultural causes for the centre’s decline. A major reason for this lies in the loss of a unique ‘positive’ identity for the area and the development of large supermarkets on the urban fringe.

5.2 This ancient building could be returned not just to the Victorian vision of representing moral and social values, but to a spectacular modern retailing icon. It has the potential to create a more attractive, spacious and socially interactive (and inclusive) environment than any supermarket.

5.3 To borrow the words of the current Baxter’s soup advertisement on television: ‘Herefordshire’ really is one of nature’s larders’. The council simply needs to demonstrate the political will to prove it.

Annex 1

Central Government Initiatives

1. Countryside Agency ~ ‘Market Towns: 21^st Century Service Centres’⁶.

As the council is well aware, the Countryside Agency report seeks to ‘reinvigorate England’s market towns’ by adopting various devises such as establishing “a national ‘health check’ methodology to help local authorities examine the economic, social and environmental health of market towns.”

This report was published in the wake of the Government’s Urban White Paper (pub. 16.11 00). In the words of the Countryside Agency’s chief executive, Richard Wakeford, speaking at the International conference of the Association of Town Centre Managers in London on 15^th June 2000, “We are looking to reinvent market towns as thriving 21^st century service centres for the rural hinterlands.” And at the ‘Action for Market Towns’ convention in Shaftsbury on Friday 24^th September, 2000, “Assistance must be given to market towns to help them stem their decline and regain their role as healthy business centres...market towns need added value.”

Importantly, in the Herefordshire context, the project aims to exploit “the distinctive products of the surrounding countryside through farmers’ markets and new food processing businesses.” And (via the Agency’s linked ‘Eat the View’ campaign), to help producers with the marketing of local products by providing advice about how to access new markets and strengthen the links between urban consumers and the rural landscape that they value.

2. DETR ~ Planning Policy Guidance on Town Centres and Retail Developments (PPG6) (June 1996) states as follows⁷:

The Guidance , at paragraph 2.2 advises that the vitality and viability of town and district centres depend on:

• retaining and developing a wide range of attractions and amenities;

• creating and maintaining an attractive environment;

• ensuring good accessibility to and within the centre; and

• attracting continuing investment in development or refurbishment of existing buildings.

The guidance advocates (at para 2.12) that local planning authorities ‘encourage diversification of uses in the town centre as a whole’ and that the ‘diversity of uses in town centres, and their accessibility to people living and working in the area, make an important contribution to their vitality and viability (para 2.11) and that local authorities should accordingly adopt a positive approach to such changes (para 2.14).

3 DETR ~ Best Value

Section 3 Local Government Act 1999 requires authorities to “make arrangements to secure continuous improvement in the way in which its functions are exercised, having regard to a combination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness.”

As set out in the White Paper, Modern Local Government – In Touch with the People, the modernisation agenda also includes a new local authority duty to promote the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of their areas.

Best value provides a mechanism to achieve local sustainable communities which achieve the needs of local people and address wider concerns. Good quality services should inherently perform well against sustainable criteria. A vibrant city centre should provide real choice for the consumer, to provide a valuable ‘lead in’ for other best value initiatives, such as an increased purchasing of local food and organic produce for schools and canteens etc.

4 DETR ~ The Impact of Large Foodstores on Market Towns and District Centres⁸.

Local Authorities’ Views:

12. “The responsibility….for developing policies to safeguard the vitality and viability of market towns and district centres, rests with local authorities.”

5 Department of Health ~ Health Improvement Programmes

The requirement in the Health Act 1999 (section 28(1)), that Health Authorities, in combination with their constituent local authorities, develop Health Improvement Programmes (HImP’s), as part of the Department of Health’s ‘Our Healthier Nation’ (1998)⁹.

The imaginative development in Hereford of its city centre would advance all these initiatives. In each case the emphasis is upon increased awareness of the importance of diet in improving health, particularly by creating improved access to fresh fruit and vegetables¹⁰ as well as the importance of environmental protection. For example, reducing the need for foodstuffs to travel unnecessary journeys- ie food miles, by supporting the county’s large but struggling agricultural sector in its efforts to diversify into alternative types of food production and local distribution, thus increasing local consumption, would advance all these initiatives.

6 Department of Health ~ National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal. Policy Action Team:13¹¹.

The Department of Health has recently issued a discussion paper advocating strategies for improving shopping access for people living in deprived neighbourhoods. This report highlights the need for the regeneration of local communities, of which “vibrant local shops can play a vital part in this process…through providing employment…new skills and training opportunities…reduce crime and improve health by providing a range of quality goods, including food, at affordable prices.” This includes encouraging local authorities to “develop strategies to enable better access to fruit and vegetables.” Social exclusion and isolation is a condition that exists not just within urban or rural communities, but one that alienates the urban from the rural community. This is an issue that is noted for concern by all these government reports, and one that this authority needs to concern itself with also.

7 Department of Health ~ Low Income, Food, Nutrition and Health: strategies for improvement.¹²

A report prepared by the Low Income Project Team for the Nutrition Task Force, as part of the Department of Health’s ‘Health of the Nation¹³’ initiative which stressed (at para 6.1) that local authorities ‘need to recognise that their actins can affect and address many of the initial problems associated with enabling those on low incomes to eat more healthily’.

Local Initiatives

1 Herefordshire Council ~ Service Delivery Plan 1999/2000

Markets and Fairs, Service Objective No 1 states “ To improve and create a series of interesting and vibrant markets throughout the County, which will benefit local residents and market traders alike.”

2 Herefordshire Council ~ New Commitment to Regeneration’ LA21 Community Plan

A new vision of a vital, environmentally sustainable, people-friendly, accessible consumer service in the heart of the city, would prove to be a ground breaking project in advancing the three broad aims which under score the Community Plan, these being:

• To create fair and thriving communities (this to include building an equal and inclusive society);

• To protect and enhance the environment (this to include promoting a ‘sustainable environment’); and

• To build a strong competitive and innovative economy (this to include the encouragement of participation and partnership working).

.3 Herefordshire Food Links

The Herefordshire Food Links initiative with the support of the Southern Marches Partnership seeks to “forge links between local food producers and promote the sale and consumption of local produce to the benefit of the people of Herefordshire. The project helps to foster a sustainable local economy, reduce food-miles, benefit local food related businesses and act as an attraction for visitors to the county. Along with the establishment of the countywide farmers’ markets project, redeveloping the waning fortunes of the city’s Butter Market is seen as an important facet of this initiative. This would also meet the objectives of the Rural Development Programme, which aims to boost, agricultural and non-agricultural diversification, and the effective marketing of the produce of such diversification.

4 Herefordshire Tourism

In Herefordshire we breed, grow and make wonderful food. In recent years an appreciation has developed of it’s enormous potential economic value to the community with concerted marketing initiatives, by (amongst others), Herefordshire Tourism, through their excellent ‘Flavours of Herefordshire’ Award Scheme, run in conjunction with Heart of England Fine Foods. The Association for the Promotion of Herefordshire; the Chamber of Commerce; Herefordshire Food Links; the National Farmers’ Union; Local Agenda 21 and the ‘Organic Growers’ initiative. However, according to recent figures only 5% of overall visitor expenditure is spent on shopping for food in this county.

Interestingly, it is not only tourists who are apparently missing out on access to local produce. A November 2000 Farmers’ Market survey conducted for the Council¹⁴, cited 76% of consumers as saying they would like more food produced by local farmers to be available in local shops, with over 85% of farmers’ market customers stating that when at the market, they would be visiting other shops as well. The overall survey data suggests that “farmers’ markets bring in extra trade to the town and they are beneficial to the town and it’s locality as a whole”(Draft report by Director of Environment and Director of Policy and Community, Dec. 2000). Clearly, there is scope for increasing the vitality of this industry in the heart of the county, by further promoting all that is best of a proud and serious local industry.

Such initiatives are seen by central retailers as helping to ‘revitalise our city centre’, with popular appeal across most socio-economic sectors. A notable exception to this enthusiasm is the understandable sensitivity to competition by local traders in the Butter Market, who justifiably feel that they are neglected by both the public and a high charging local authority, with little in return in the way of support.