"It has been the de facto centre of every major celebration in Nottingham - from VE Day to Forest coming home with the European Cup"
When Billy Conqueror of the Normans shot fat southern ponce King Harold in the eye and became King of All England, Nottingham was in for some changes. Up until then, a group of Saxons had been living around what’s now the Lace Market for a few centuries, sipping four-groat-a-pint mead, snorting ground dragon’s teeth and building up the fortified borough of Snottengaham (‘Snott’s people by the water’).
In a shrewd example of early diplomacy, William realised he wouldn’t be all that welcome there, so instead of moving in with the Saxons, he built a fort around Castle Rock, resulting in two settlements on opposite sides of a valley, with a large chunk of No Mans Land in between. The Saxons held their markets around Weekday Cross (near La Tasca and the Pitcher and Piano), and the Normans did their thing inside their castle walls, remaining separate from each other for a few years, but by the 1070’s regular trading was well underway in the demilitarisedzone - which became known as the Great Market Place.
Thus, once a week on a Saturday, the Saxon and Norman settlements would set up a weekend market that attracted folk from surrounding villages like Sneinton, Radford, Lenton, Beeston, Carlton - even Grantham and Ruddington. It became a big social event too, with fayres and amusements set up for the traders and customers. Cattle would be baited by pitbulls before being butchered; cockfights and dogfights were commonplace, with bets flying all over the place.
Some commonly-used phrases still around today came directly from these medieval market place frivolities; “not enough room to swing a cat” comes from the somewhat distasteful marketplace game where someone would put a cat into a bag, swing it above his head before tossing it in the air for one lucky punter to shoot an arrow at it. If he hit it he would win a prize! “To let the cat out the bag” comes from a common practice on butchers’ stalls where a customer would select his pig ready for his Sunday roast only to get home and find the stallholder had swapped it for a cat.
By 1284 the market had become such an event for the local districts that an annual fair took hold. This would, over the ages, become known the world over as Goose Fair, held every year since, bar ten years due to the two world wars. This stayed in the Square for six and a half centuries until 1928 when it outgrew its surroundings and moved to its current location on The Forest. Not only is it still the largest travelling fair in Europe, but is also the oldest fair of any kind in the world.
During the Middle Ages, The Great Market Place had a 20-foot high wall running through the middle. Some say this was to keep the meat market separate from the other stalls, but due to the fact this wall was twice the height of any normal building, it was more than likely originally built to make sure the Saxon and Norman communities remained separate and didn’t have to cross each other’s paths unless they could help it. Over the generations, the two settlements grew and joined to form one large town, and the Square became the centrepiece for the community, as it still is today.
In 1926 the now permanent stalls of the meat markets (called The Shambles – deriving from the Normans’ attempts at the Saxon word for butcher, Flesh Hewers - from where Fletcher Gate takes its name) were knocked down and construction on Cecil Howitt’s new Council House began, which was opened by HRH Edward Windsor Prince of Wales in 1929.
Since then, it has been the de facto centre of every major celebration in Nottingham from VE Day to Forest coming home with the European Cup, a place to gather for every memorial - the spot where you meet that girl at work who you fancy and somewhere to put the Emos on a Saturday afternoon. Although the verdict is still out on the new Square even before it’s finished, it’s status as the very centre of Nottingham remains unchallenged - and even if the stone for the new Square might come from Portugal, Ireland and China, its roots are solid Notts.
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