The old Special Markets mentioned in the Records of the Borough are the Grain Market, the Bean Market, the Sheep Market, the Swine Market and the Cattle Market, and, in later times, a Horse Fair and a Wool Market. The Hay Market was always held outside the walls, on account of the impossibility of waggons loaded with hay passing under the Gateways. In the Saturday Market the Butchers had their Shambles, which stood, in Elizabethan days, on the North-west side of the Market Place and North of the Gainsborough. A Fish Market was existing in the 14th century. There was also a "Housewife's Market," sometimes called the "Women's Market," and a Drapers' Market. In the Saturday Market the goods were generally, and for many years habitually, exposed to the weather on open stalls, but in the 15th century, shortly before 1440, a Market House was built, in which Butchers' Shambles were set up and stalls for clothiers and other tradesmen. This Market House was generally known as "Le Draperie," or "The Shambles and Draperie." All traders using it paid rents to the Duchy of Lancaster. The butchers, for instance, paid 112d. for each stall.
At the time when Queen Elizabeth executed her first Leicester Charter of 1589, the Draperie was let on a thirty-one years Lease to Edward Catlyn, and the Queen conveyed the property to the Corporation of Leicester subject to the remainder of this Lease. But the drapers did not use the Market House greatly in those days, preferring to set up stalls in the open market. Consequently in the year 1601, the tenant, the widow of Edward Catlyn, had some difficulty in paying the rent. At any rate the Earl of Huntingdon wrote to the Mayor on her behalf, complaining that drapers were permitted to act in this way, so that "her Majesty's house," erected for their stalls, being "unfurnished" would soon be "ruinated." He therefore desired the Mayor to see to it that "such as offer wrong by absenting themselves from the draperie may by you be compelled to repair to the place for that use built."
The Gainsborough, which was erected some time before 1533, had no accommodation for stalls, except some shops, under a projecting balcony, which were let off to shoemakers.
119
