Janet’s Story
Market smells and pretty fabrics.
Janet was born in Sheffield in 1957 but moved away. This interview was carried out during a visit back to the market for the first time in around 30 years.
Janet describes her first memory of the market:
‘I think I was very small, I would be about six, and I think we probably came from Dixon Lane ‘cause that name is very familiar to me and there were stalls there and then you could enter the market there. Yeah, I can remember it, well, fairly clearly. I think more than anything in my memory is the smell, the smells that I smelt when I walked in, the fish market really. The very strong smell of fish. And going round the fish market, which I didn’t like at all, I didn’t really like coming, it wasn’t my favourite place to come.’
She didn’t like the fish market but did enjoy looking at pretty things:
‘I quite liked looking at the stalls with the clothes and the pretty things, jewellery that sort of thing, but not so much the food side of it. I wasn’t really happy when we went down to the basement where the fish market, I think, used to be.’And once came with a friend for fabric:‘When I was about early twenties I did come in here to get some brocade from a stand. A friend was making me a nightie and I needed the brocade and I came in here to buy some. So I can remember doing that so I’d be about twenty two. So that is probably the last time I ever came. So it’s thirty three years ago. So, yeah, that’s the last time I came here…It seems like another world to me now, it is another world to me. It’s quite nice.’