Titchfield Market Hall: 400-Year-Old Gem
Titchfield Market Hall is a beautiful timber framed structure originally built around 1620.
Located in the heart of the The Weald and Downland Living Museum's market square, Titchfield Market Hall is around 400 years old!
Market halls like this were once general throughout England.
Among the earliest which have survived are several from the late 15th and early 16th centuries - the majority were timber-framed.
Many were demolished in the 18th and 19th centuries, since they no longer served the purpose for which they were built and were occupying space needed for other uses.
Many others were replaced by more solid buildings, with enclosed rooms taking the place of the open arcade.
One by one they were transformed, lost, or, in a few cases, moved to a less valuable site.
This was the fate of the Titchfield Market Hall in the middle of the last century — some two and a half centuries after it was first built.
Market halls served several functions: selling spaces, a lock up for offenders, a private upper chamber for meetings.
This building was moved once within Titchfield itself, then following a period of rapid deterioration ending in a Dangerous Building Notice being issued and all other options exhausted, it was offered to the Weald and Downland Museum.
Local builders worked on its dismantling in 1971 and it was erected by the museum team from 1972 to 1974.
The Weald and Downland Living Museum has more than 50 historic building exhibits and is designated for the importance of its collections.
Exhibits include a medieval farmstead; a working watermill producing stoneground flour; exhibitions focusing on traditional building techniques and agriculture; historic gardens; farm livestock and a working Tudor kitchen.
It's well worth a visit.
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