Maidstone market

Tuesday was Maidstone general market day, standing beside the river behind Smythe and Drayson. Do you remember, the wood yard? I can still see pieces of timber disappearing down the Medway after the flooding.

We entered the market either from a gateway on the riverbank or from where you now would go to the new courtrooms. Remember Norman Sturt and his delicious pie shop?

Looking down into Hart Street was a fancy dress hire shop with huge papier-mache heads looking down at you. Entering from this street would bring you straight down to the main gate into the market.

On the right was the area used for auctioning livestock and vegetables. On the left, you would walk into the ordinary market stalls for clothes and hardware and meat and vegetables.

Some stalls were selling hot drinks and rolls and some were selling jellied eels, there were some very suspicious looking characters here rolling the bones of the eels around there mouths before spitting them out.

Around the back and to the top of the market was the area for auctioning junk (you know antiques now). What a pleasure looking around here, I think I should have had a junk shop.

You could buy old garden rakes or machines for taking the tops of bottles, you name it and you could buy it here, if it was old, someone had had it previously and here was the perfect place to sell it and for us to buy it. What a load of old junk we bought from here.

quin

Country: Australia Maidstone I remember it well: hey you could give a category over to the market on a tuesday and "two bob a pound the bananas" and the A1 fish and chip van all the game and poultry hanging from the stalls and the jellied eels and whelks etc for sale.... and my favorite the second hand dinky man.....

I think I buried most of my old dinkys in the garden Quin, wish I could find them now though. Peter

stella Wood

Maidstone I remember it well: maidstone market that was a market you could buy anything there i got my first tortoise there sometimes there was a billy goat for sale you could smell it long before you saw it farmers could buy cows there and drive them home along the ashford road many a time we had cows wandering in the side roads and gardens sunday evenings in summer were spent watching the traffic coming back from the coast it used to go back for miles it was great fun as they would throw sweets and sticks of rock to us kids we loved it.

David Bird

Country: Australia Maidstone I remember it well: Talking about the Market. I was brought up in Hart Street No 14 then 16, at the top end of the market stood Foster Clarks opposite side of the Road was a tea / Coffee Cafe, behind large advertising boards were 3 Railway Houses 12. 14. & 16 Hart St, in front of them was the railway yards and goods offices (all gone now) I did work in those offices before transferring to Aylesford Station, (now an Indian take away) we had other attractions in the market , Wrestling & Flower shows , also in Heart Street we had a little sweet/ general shop. Mrs Hedges and the Pie shop with their great big St Bernard's and a Sausage dog , who can remember Grant's Cherry Brandy and the Mineral water factory, Willet & Robinson's the coal yards. all gone, like many I have so much memories of this great town, From Sharps to Maskells Ginger beer, , and the Cinemas Some one ask what was there before the Granada, Marchant & Tubbs Brewery, Brenchley Gardens houses part of The roof decorations Regards David Bird