Cirencester Corn Hall

Cirencester is a very pretty little market town that holds a market in their Corn Hall every week. Our last Christmas Market was a table in this beautiful location.

The Venue:

The Corn Hall, like the Tithe Barn in old Basing is an historic building in the heart of the town. Unlike Old Baising, however, being inside this barn did feel like being indoors. The relative youth of this building in comparison with the Tithe Barn will have had a lot to do with this – the 19th century Corn Hall is much younger than the 11th century Tithe Barn. This means that the contemporary construction methods and requirements were different, so the building was naturally less cold, and the building was not quite so stringently protected, so we benefited from mod-cons such as radiators and lighting (decadent, I know). As a result, we were comfortable, and could enjoy the day.

Even more important, the venue had a little tea shop attached, Diversitea. This was one of those tea shops with mismatched crockery and furniture, and a chalk board display of a full range of TeaPigs teas – which I’m not entirely sure I like, but at least its not a Starbucks. And we were able to get decent tea and coffee at, even more surprising, a not entirely unreasonable price. It was decorated with the requisite gallery walls, where I discovered an entirely hilarious election campaign poster from the old days, linking tea drinking with a responsibility to vote for the conservatives. Disclaimer – my entertainment here in no way reflects my political opinions, but rather my interest in political history (which I read for my BA) and my life long addiction to tea. 

The Market:

The Market is well established, and runs every weekend throughout the year. As a result, marketing was not an issue. The foot fall was steady, if not heavy, and people knew what to expect. I guess it had 20 odd stalls, about a quarter of which were regulars – people who were either always there, or who had been there for several weeks over the Christmas period, and had done so several years. Everyone else was some combination of local artisans and veteran marketeers. So there was a good mixture of new to draw people in, and enough ‘known quantities’, for want of a better phrase, to give shoppers confidence.

As usual, everyone I spoke to was really nice. We were the only newbies, at least so far as I know, but there was a great mix of experience and everyone was ready to chat. We were pitched next to a lovely lady called Karen, who sells waxed cotton food coverings – an alternative to cling film. She was very entertaining and told us all about her product and her experience of selling at markets and things, amongst other things through the day.

I did my Christmas shopping this weekend, and took the opportunity to test other people’s card payment systems. One stand used a systems that looked very much like a shop one – Igencio, or something like that. behind the stand he had a proper till system going and his stand at the Corn Hall, he told me, was practically a permanent installation. I’m not entirely sure how his was set up, but I don’t think its entirely replicable for the rest of us. the other two stands I went to used iZettle – though two different generations of card reader. The first couldn’t do contactless, though this seems to be a generation thing, as the other stand was more than happy with contactless. I chatted with these two about how they found iZettle, and they seemed to have the same problems as we had with getting started with PayPal. I’m still not convinced that I’d want to move away from PayPal – which is my preferred payment platform for any online transactions.

How we did:

Sales were slow this weekend. For me, it was just about standard – I sold one purse, by no means by best day, but also not my worst. Ali sold more, but not as much as the last few weeks. I had quite a bit of interest, but that didn’t translate to actual sales. I think the reason for this was quite well summarised by the rather rude pronouncement by one lady – “they’re nice, but that’s more than I was planning to spend on her!” Rude as she was, I don’t think she was talking about me. Rather, I think she was looking for a stocking filler or an obligation gift, and nice purses don’t really fall into that category.