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[This Site is maintained by Bill Chartres. If you have any information, or photos, that may be of interest please contact me using the CONTACT page link above]
Here you can learn a little of the history of the East End Markets from their establishment to closure, view photos of the market , and, finally, view photos of the Adelaide Produce Market at Pooraka.
South Australian Educator, and author of more that 100 books, Colin Thiele, wrote of Adelaide's East End Markets;
"Nothing suggests the fruitfulness of the earth more wonderfully than an agricultural market. The rich medley of sights, sounds and smells send the sences reeling: potatoes heaped prodigally like a million dumplings, melons bigger than cannon balls, carrots like glowing marlin spikes, freshly decapitated cabbage heads, cucumbers as thick as forearms, onions in long red netting sacks like lumpy legs in fishnet stockings. Everywhere there are trucks and barrows and trolleys trundling energetically among buyers, and growers who look as if they themselves have sprung from the soil. And above all else is the smell - cloying and all-pervasive - of fruits and plants and berries, and splashes of colour in red and orange and green and yellow, as if Earth's cornucopia has suddenly opened and rained its produce on humanity."
These words so well describe my feelings of the East End Markets that I felt compelled share some of the markets history.
East End Market Co. Ltd.
[“The Old Market”]
In
the early days of the settlement of Adelaide the population was so small that
the few who grew fruit and vegetables could simply deliver their produce
directly to the greengrocers' shops at whatever time they wished. However, as
both growers and greengrocers became more numerous, the need for a market place
became obvious.
By about the 1860's, since there was no organised market, it was agreed between
the growers and the greengrocers that the sales of fruit and vegetables should
be held on East Terrace, opposite the Stag Inn, commencing at daylight, on Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Saturdays.
From this small beginning the "market" grew until at times the street
was completely blocked. This caused the City Council to install posts in Grote
Street (Victoria Square) to which horses could be tied, and to declare that all
produce sales should be made from this site, and that no person would be
allowed to sell produce in East Terrace. However, since the council refused to
provide any shelter or provision for refreshments, or public houses, the number
growers using the facility was small. Most growers came from the eastern
suburbs of Adelaide and the East Terrace site remained most popular, so they
moved to an area behind the Stag Inn and a shop owned by Mr Vaughan. As more
growers abandoned the Grote Street site this area soon became too small, and
during the late1860's Mr Vaughan acquired all the land fronting East Terrace
from Rundle Street to North Terrace, as well as that fronting the northern side
of Rundle Street from East Terrace to the Exeter Hotel, where he built the
first market sheds to protect the gardeners from the elements.
In 1871 he applied for an Act to
establish markets on the site, and this was granted in 1872. However the cost
of maintaining the market was too great, so in 1874 he issued a prospectus to
form the East End Market Co. Ltd., with a capital of £50,000 in £5 shares, to
purchase from him all his rights under the Private Markets Act as well as all
the land with a frontage of 210 feet to North Terrace, 420 feet to East Terrace
and 570 feet to Rundle Street.
The first meeting of the company, held on February 16th 1875, elected Mr Vaughan
as Managing Director and Mr W. Adams as Secretary, both of whom resigned in
1777, when Mr Thomas Playford, who was the original chairman, became the
Managing Director, with Mr John Harmer secretary.
By the turn of the century an additional half an acre had been purchased, the
original sheds built by Vaughan demolished, the area paved and covered with
"lofty structures", and the roadways asphalted, to provide
"thoroughly up-to-date" premises with "perfect sanitary arrangements".