BAMPTON IN THE 19th CENTURY

Bampton ceased to be a meaningful market very early in its existence (perhaps as early as the 16th Century) and the various attempts to revive this status - most easily evidenced today by the early 19th Century addition of a market house - appeared to do little to address this. In 1853 Rev Giles complained that the market hall itself was little used and expensive to maintain- noting that it’s meagre income from exhibitions and lectures were “hardly sufficient to heat the room and to pay for the windows, which are broken by the boys congregated in the market place below”. By the late nineteenth century it had become storage for the town’s fire engine and by 1885 it must have presented a rather lamentable sight.