Chris Lloyd looks back at the long and chequered history of one of County Durham’s most unusual – and best loved – landmarks

IN the middle of Barnard Castle, there is a large obstacle which blocks the free flow of air, traffic and the eyes. It has been there for 250 years, in which time it has been vilified, mocked, shot at and, most recently, bashed into.

And yet it still stands. In fact, it stands so proud that its recent brushes with the sides of errant juggernauts have once again revived talk of a bypass being built across the fields of Teesdale to get around it.

It is, of course, the Market Cross, or the Butter Mart, or the Town Hall – call it what you will.

In its earliest days in the late 18th century, it was called “Breaks’ Folly”, as the townspeople saw no point in Thomas Breaks’ octagonal construction.

Not only did they blame it for getting in the way of horse-drawn traffic, but they also blamed it for the putrid smells that were causing an olfactory nuisance in Barney’s Market Place as it prevented the wind from blowing them away.

And they said it was visually unattractive, as it broke the natural, gentle sweep of the Market Place as it disappeared down The Bank to the Tees.

Mr Breaks, a wool merchant who lived overlooking his traffic hazard, probably built it for the best of motives.

In ancient days, it is believed there was a butter market in the shadow of the castle wall on the west side of the Market Place. In those ancient days, building against the castle wall was forbidden, but as the castle’s influence faded, buildings sprung up, including, in 1679, the Golden Lion. The Lion, though, was practically on top of the butter market, and so to sell their dairy wares, the farmers’ wives had to sit out, exposed to the elements in the Market Place.

So in 1747, Mr Breaks took pity on them and built a new butter mart at the top of The Bank. This seems to have been just the central octagon which then had the arcade added around it in 1774. It is, according to those that know their Dorics from their Ionics, a Tuscan Arcade, which were extremely fashionable at the time – the most famous one, though, was not in Tuscany but in Rowlands Gill, on the Gibside estate, where the fabulously wealthy Bowes family had built their Orangery in the style of a Tuscan Arcade in 1772.

As well as being fashionable, it was now very substantial, so the townspeople took pot shots at it – both verbal and literal. They called it “Breaks’ Folly”, and they fired at it.

In 1804, when Britain was all a-quiver about a possible invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte of France, two drinkers in the Turks Head about 100 yards away had an argument about who was the better shot. One was a soldier named Taylor, a member of the Teesdale Legion of Volunteers; the other was a gamekeeper named Cruddas, who worked for the Earl of Strathmore at Streatlam Castle.

So they went to the street outside the Turks and took aim at the weathervane on top of the market’s cupola. Whoever fired first was a deadeye, his bullet passing through the vane and knocking it around 180 degrees.

But whoever went second was equally accurate, hitting the vane and knocking it back through 180 degrees to its starting point.

Even today you can see the two bullet holes.

In 1808, the old tollbooth (or town hall and courthouse) and shambles (or meat market) in the Market Place were demolished. These ancient buildings – or at least the butchers’ offal heaps in the shambles – were the source of the town centre’s putrid smells, so the butter market was suddenly in the clear.

The butter market also gained a proper purpose: the functions of the town hall, administering the market, were transferred to its upper floor. The magistrates held their court up there – the central part of the ground floor was converted into a cell for prisoners and, upstairs in 1826, a little gallery was added for the jury to sit in.

At least no one can have been prosecuted for harming animals because there really cannot have been enough room to swing a cat in there.

Gradually, its functions were spread to other larger buildings, and it acquired new responsibilities – the town’s first horse-drawn fire engine was locked up in the cell when the prisoners were moved out.

But as those roles faded, so it was reduced to being an undercover adjunct of the market, although as the age of the motor car dawned, even that role was removed from it as no-one would want to get squashed trying to reach the centre of the roundabout to buy a pat of salted butter.

Which just left its prime function: annoying the traffic.

Calls for a bypass for Barney have been growing since the 1960s, and in the 1970s vague plans were seriously considered to loop a road around the north and west sides of the town with a new bridge upstream of the County Bridge connecting the A66 with the A688. There was also talk of an eastern relief road, which would connect the A67 road from Darlington the A688 through Streatlam Park.

But concern grew in Staindrop and West Auckland that Barney’s traffic would just be dumped on them. And then, in the early 1990s, as they vague plans were on the verge of being drawn into something more concrete, shopkeepers and cafe owners in the town expressed concerns that if all the traffic bypassed the centre, so would all of their trade. Durham County Council placed camera-monitored weight limits on the bridges into the town, which stopped the heaviest juggernauts from threatening the Market Cross.

Durham County Council, reluctant to tackle the expensive geography of the proposed bypass, shoved the scheme to the most backward of backburners – it was put off until the 21st Century, and when that arrived it was punted to 2030 at the earliest.

So there stands the Grade I-listed Market Cross, buffeted by centuries of traffic but still resolutely and obstinately blocking the way. Is there a finer traffic obstacle anywhere in the county?