A butcher’s shop for at least 200 years, the trade continues unbroken on this site. This would have been an open fronted shop when it was built in the 17th Century. Animals were still slaughtered here in the 20th Century.
When this building was built in the 16th Century Harleston was a well to do town engaged in the wool trade. It was not until peace was made with Scotland in the 18thC that a huge trade began in fattening Scotch Cattle really took off bringing previously untold wealth to the town. Until then Bullock Fair was the Lamb Sale Yard! Wealth was associated with meat consumption and of course where you find meat you find butchers!
We know this has been continually in use as a Butchers for at least 200 years and as such embodies centuries of history within a modern business and oft adapted building.
Before refrigeration, meat was killed more or less where it was to be eaten, butchered and put on open display to be purchased - flies were just part of life then!
Spot the curved corner to avoid damage to building or beast when animals entered the yard. Also see sloping fall of yard and drains to help deal with the byproducts of animal processing.
No part of the animal was wasted with choice cuts of meats being sold side by side with the equally popular but much more affordable offal. Skins and hides would be processed by the tanners or curriers who were also busy in the town and once processed would be converted into a range of products from agricultural harnesses and saddles to gloves and footwear. Harleston had its own specialist tradesmen covering the whole spectrum of trades.
Until the end of the 19th C, a garden and orchard extended behind the premises, with another area of open ground to the right of the building. Various barns and sheds were added into the area behind the house during the Victorian period to service the needs of the butchery. Well into the 20th C sheep were penned in the yard behind the shop, cows were held in a barn and a large water heating copper was run, all part of the on-site abbatoir continuing a tradition 100s of years old.
At the turn of the 19th C a local builder squeezed in what is now the café between this and the other older building to the right and took the opportunity to face the Butcher’s shop and house with modern bricks. You will see the distinctive window details in the Butchers and the later building both match - in spite of the buildings differing in all other respects.
Rayner also put up the canopy over the front of the butchers, useful for both fending off the heat of the sun and also for giving an opportunity to hang meats and game from the rails beneath it – a classic display for butchers of the time. Metal grills would have been inserted over these plate glass windows to maintain air flow whilst avoiding ingress of flies.
The new windows would be similar to Eastman’s, a butchers established in Harleston at about the same time as the modernisation. Hygienic glazed tiles on the walls and high fired, hard wearing quarry tiles on the floors. Any one of my generation or older will remember the curiously appealing smell arising from the combination of the resinous tang of sawdust spread upon these floors, and the metallic smell of the blood that the sawdust was spread out to absorb.
From Sydney Denny’s Collection
Eastman’s Butchers on the corner of Green Dragon Alley and the Market Place, showing single plate glass windows of the sort inserted into Browne’s building.
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