Pannier Market and Butchers Row

Victorian covered market hall with adjacent historic butchers' arcade

The Pannier Market is the civic and commercial heart of Barnstaple, a handsome covered hall built in 1855 that operates on several days a week with a rotating programme of produce, crafts, antiques, and general goods. Tuesday and Friday are the main market days; the antiques market runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The building is a good piece of Victorian engineering — iron columns and a glass roof that fills the interior with light.

Directly alongside the market is Butchers Row, a narrow arcade of Victorian shops that was purpose-built in 1855 to house the butchers displaced from the street market. The row of small shopfronts with decorative ironwork is one of the most distinctive streetscapes in Devon. Many of the units are still food shops, though not exclusively butchers. The whole complex, market hall and arcade together, is the most characterful part of the town centre and worth a slow walk.

things to do market sight
A story
The market takes its name from the panniers — the wicker baskets — that farmers' wives traditionally carried on their backs when walking to town to sell butter, eggs, and vegetables. The Pannier Market was built in 1855 to bring this centuries-old trade under cover, and the tradition of small-scale local producers selling direct to buyers continues in the same building today.