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In Market Street, shoppers threaded their way through crowds swarming in and out of the market, among the horse-drawn wagonettes or brakes arriving at the market approaches from Cilfynydd and Ynysybwl and the hansom cabs darting to and from all parts of the district, and among laden tricycles and bicycles and whistling errand boys hurrying here and there with their delivery baskets. Some shoppers made their way into town from the busy platforms of the Taff Vale Railway station on the Tumble or the Barry Railway station on the Graig - dodging the butchers carts speeding along High Street and Taff Street. Shoppers walked from the old Welsh Harp Hotel terminus at the top of Mill Street after alighting from the horse-tramcars running between Porth and Pontypridd. They met the street-hawkers, the bell-ringing muffin man on the corner of the New Inn, the Shoni-onion man with his beret and his bike, and Tom Marshman's (Old Tom Cockles) cart. Children were drawn irresistibly to Pontypridd's own Old Curiosity Shop complete with quaint Dickensian-style windows. Here, in a long-ago demolished building near the Arcade, was a wonderland of rosy cheeked dolls with real hair, rag dolls, jointed wooden dolls. There were spinning tops, iron hoops, sailing ships, wooden engines and train sets and bowls of marbles of myriad hues. These delights competed with rubber balls, cardboard characters filled with sweets, acrobats on wires, lucky dips, toy brass instruments and drums. Months of pocket money was spent on Noah's arks, needlecases, paint boxes, trinkets, peep-shows and musical boxes.... The centrally situated E. Hughes shop (later, Gwilym Evans) employed dressmakers on the premises to create gowns and other ladies' fashions. Edgar Fennell was the longest-established fishmonger in Pontypridd and kept breakfast tables served with kippers at a penny a pair and supplied rabbits for a shilling - although he faced great competition from local poachers who stalked the woodlands and hillsides of the district with snares and guns and who snatched trout from the streams.... The Market Street shop of William Pegler, who had a branch shop elsewhere in town, was typical of many local grocery shops in 1884. Shoppers walked up to wide counters lined down to a sawdust-sprinkled floor with biscuit tins fitted with hinged, glass tops so that the contents could be viewed and sampled. The spotless wooden counters were scrubbed daily with scalding water. Assistants weighed out tea from each new chest into stout blue packets or into tin caddies, ladled sugar with a horn scoop from sacks into small blue bags, and dug butter from large slabs before patting it into shape on a sheet of grease-proofed paper and weighing it on shiny brass scales with a selection of small weights. The smells from gaslights and paraffin oil lamps mixed with those from sides of bacon, hams, coffee, cocoa, a barrel of apples, strings of onions, and cheeses set out to be tasted and selected by customers waiting patiently for their turn to be served personally. Shelves were lined with an array of pickles and jams and tinned foods. And condensed milk - when deliciously spread on a hunk of bread, it stuck to the grimy faces and ragged coat-sleeves of many Pontypridd youngsters. Thomas Forrest was a photographer in Pontypridd for nearly forty years. He took an interest in the newly developing art while he was employed at Brown Lenox chainworks at Ynysangharad.... Cambrian Lane, a market entrance roadway running beside the old Penuel Chapel, was known as Occupation Road. It was an appropriate name: many craftsmen worked from the 1840s in the little cottages and workshops there and in the bordering area where the New Town Hall was later built.... The Victorian architecture of Market Street is seen in the high buildings of yellow brickwork decorated with red brick patterns. The Co-operative Movement was attracted to the area and late in 1898 planned for a Pontypridd store – the residents of Ynysybwl already had their Society. The Co-op came to Market Square and eventually took over the whole of the Arcade until 1984. Back at the market, shoppers secured last minute bigger bargains in perishable goods as the stallholders packed up for the day. Knots of weary errand boys, clutching empty baskets, trudged back to their Taff Street shops where some proprietors and staff scrubbed their counters white, swept up and sprinkled fresh sawdust on the floors. The lamplighter was often about his duties as the last market cart clattered over the cobblestones out of Market Square and the sound of horses hooves died away. © Don Powell 1996
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