'End of Victoria Market means city people have nowhere to buy wet fish or find a butcher's shop'

THE demise of the Victoria Market is a testament to failure, a failure by Nottingham City Council to recognise the role played by markets in the life of a community; a failure to work constructively with the traders over many years; a failure of any intellectual drive to create a new location for traders.

- RICHARD TRESIDDER, former business editor of the Nottingham Post

It is now impossible to buy wet fish in Nottingham. There are no butchers in the city centre, no place for fresh or unusual vegetables, no stalls for nuts, Indian spices or a choice of florists.

In destroying Victoria Market, not only were hundreds of years of tradition ripped up by a vacuous local authority, scores of businesses were threatened with closure (just as has happened with the closure of Lenton Business Centre). Traders never had a harmonious relationship with the council, complaining of poor maintenance or delayed improvement. More recently, traders have been locked in litigation with the authority.

More than 40 years ago, I moved into the Lace Market. I shopped in a bustling market for food, the butchers, the fishmongers, the bakers, the Polish stalls. I could scoff a bowl of mushy peas or even an occasional oyster. I can still name some of the traders who brought in their produce from fields nearby.