With over 320 years of history, the Deal Town Saturday Market has been offering a place for traders and punters to find and sell some delectable items for quite some time; from food and beer to plants and clothes.
The Saturday Market closed temporarily when lockdown was first announced back in March of last year, but after a few months’ hiatus it returned later in July, however, customers were encouraged to wear masks when entering the market, a one-way system was put in place, and stalls were equipped with hand sanitisers.
We spoke to Emma Barret, who has been running a stall alongside her partner at Deal Market for over eight years selling and making drinks with their own freshly roasted coffee, to find out a little bit more about the market’s popularity and the joys of being a stall holder:
“I have always said that when I find it a chore getting up at 6am on a Saturday morning I will pack it in but it hasn’t happened yet! The people are great and all my customers just keep coming back, testament that I must being doing something right. There is a good variety of stalls and there is always something interesting to find in the antique stalls.
“There is some jolly banter amongst the stall holders and a few of them go back 25 years.”
How has the market changed over the past 8 years you’ve been a stall holder there?
“For the first 5 years it was much the same. Half of it was knick-knacks and antiques, there were a few food stalls together with some more traditional stalls. But in the last couple of years there are many more food stalls and less antique-style stalls. The population of Deal has exploded and it is just much busier than it ever used to be.”