500 years of history.
10 Market Place, located in the historic market square, is a building that dates back to the 16th century. Its earliest recorded use was as a wholeseller of china, glassware and general furnishing under Francis Porch Parker, an influential Shepton local, from 1845.
We are hugely grateful to Len Ware for researching and compiling the history of 10 Market Place.
The brief (recorded) history of
Number 10
1822
19th CenturyElizabeth Richardson is listed in Pigot & Co.'s Business Directory as a dealer in china, glass, and earthenware. The location is specified as Market Place, though it's unconfirmed whether she occupied Nos. 9 and 10.
1845
Francis Porch Parker, a businessman who travelled the country with a dog-pulled cart collecting marine merchandise, was the first recorded occupier at 10 Market Place, enlarging his retail offer to include glass and earthenware. In 1848 he was succeeded by his son, Frederick J Parker, who also inherited responsibility for managing the market shambles.
The shop would have been trading at the time of a notable incident in 1848, when a Shepton man put a halter round his wife’s neck and sold her for 5 shillings at market place. Wife selling in England had become a popular way of ending an unsatisfactory marriage for the poor from the late 17th century, as divorce was impossible for all but the very wealthy.
Unfortunately for the wife-seller, the man who bought his wife was in fact the woman’s brother, who set upon his brother-in-law with his sisters and some locals, further to which, the wife-seller was left fighting for his life and minus one eye.
1880
A description of the shop in 1880 by Mrs Agnes Laver:
“Mr. Parker’s china shop, he sold all kinds of wares and he always displayed the brown glazed salting pans, wash basins and jars on the pavement and on the road. Everyone in those days salted down butter in large brown jars for winter use; it was then a shilling a pound.”
Frederick Parker died in the 1880’s and was described in the obituary in the Shepton Mallet Journal as “…generous and sympathetic, he was a liberal supporter, always ready to lend goods from his stock required for school treats, tea meetings, and so forth, and in this way benefitting many worthy objects, and relieving their promoters of worry and trouble. He was one of the oldest Oddfellows of the town, as a Druid he attained the degree of Past Arch and member of the Grand Lodge of England.”
The druidic orders of that day were about fellowship, charity, and sometimes spiritual or moral teachings. The Grand Lodge is typically the governing body overseeing various local chapters of a fraternal order, and being a member meant that Parker would have held a position of considerable authority and influence within the organisation on a national level.
20th Century1923
10 Market Place continues its function as a retailer of china, glass and earthenware (and now advertising ironmongery) under Cornelius Pursey.
1939
Renee and Gabriel Pursey use the upstairs to run a ladies hairdressers
1955
10 Market Place (back then it was actually 9 Market Place) has been selling china and homeware for 100 years. Now, it is under the stewardship of A. W. Cook.
1960
The sixties arrive, and the building becomes a boot and shoe retailer under John Edward Hooper. Upstairs, a chiropody practice tends to feet ailments.
1973
Palmer Snell chartered surveyors, auctioneers, estate agents and valuers occupy the property, as the north eastern block of the market square is razed to make way for The Centre, a gift to the town from the Showering family.
1992
R & J Cheesley, electrical contractors, rent the premises.
21st Century1977-2000’s
Over the next few years, 10 Market Place enjoys a period of reinvention as a café, first as Ashton House - a dress shop and tea room stocking Mandy Marsh dresses, jackets, and Sloggi underwear, then as Mendip Needlecrafts offering a wide range of tailoring services, then as Dora’s Coffee Shop, with a student menu and coffee from 70p.
By 2004, the shop was in very poor condition, and was one of nine local properties to benefit from a Heritage and Economic Regeneration Scheme grant, obtained by Mendip District Council, Shepton Mallet Town Council, and Somerset Council, which funded the renovation of the property and created a separate entrance to the above shop offices.
2010
In early 2010, the team behind the BBC’s new history series ‘Turn Back Time’ chose Shepton Mallet as their location to use empty shops to show the changes of different trades and shopping habits over the decades, specifically 1887, 1914, the 1930’s, the 1960’s, and the 1970’s. Local residents were invited to participate and families moved into the shops, living life as it would have been in the 1870’s, in period attire, with no running water, no electricity, chamber pots under the beds, candles at night, and water fetched from the trough in the square.
No.10, was first used as a Victorian dressmakers used by fashion designer Gill Cockwell. Sped forward into the 1960s it was transformed into a hair salon with Gill learning the joys of being a 60s hair stylist creating bouffant beehives. The shop was last used by music lover and expert David Lashmar when it was transformed into a 1970s record store, when the film crews left the shop was empty.
2011–2017
Barry Higgins branches out his successful B.D.Biker Clothing store in Cheddar to No.10.
2019–2022
The Art of Essence occupies the retail store, a media outfit rent the first floor, and naturopath occupies the second floor.
2023
10 Market Place is bought by Interim Spaces in September 2023. More to come…