A VETERAN market trader has been recalling his memories of a half-century selling in Tavistock.
Charlie Snell is an amazingly sociable and lively 95 and still working three days a week in the pannier market, providing the essentials to town residents and people further afield – such as properly tough bin bags, affordable envelopes, plant pots and shoe polish.
He has worked his stall for 52 years – graduating from brass ornaments fashionable in the 1970s to the wares on his current stall. However, things have changed over the decades, the market used to be a one-stop for freshly butchered meat, fruit, veg and eggs and anything for the larder and fridge, also a tailor and shoe repairer.
Charlie was even a TV star when the location team behind a new series about a small town solicitor (played by Starsky and Hutch star Paul Michael Glaser) involved him in their filming at the market.
Charlie said: “They were filming a car chase for the first part of a TV series about a solicitor who was played by the actor who was Starsky in Starsky and Hutch. I thought why not when they asked me.
“They moved me with my mobile stall and the fruit and veg man to outside with all my brassware on. Then they mocked up a car chase with the baddie being chased by the cops and they crashed into the two stalls with all my brass flying all over the place. The car ended up in the river.
“I did get compensation, which helped and it was quite good fun. I don’t remember it getting on telly though. So, it looks like they had second thoughts, which is a shame.”
His stock is in big demand because much of it cannot be bought in either the market or the town centre and if they can, he offers them very much cheaper than elsewhere.
He has little competition in the market because the other stalls are mostly craft, clothing, antiques, jewellery and beauty products.
It wasn’t always like this. The market used to be an assault on the senses with livestock being brought in with the accompanying braying and the inevitable pongs, but also the more heady scent of fresh flowers.
Charlie started selling in pop-up markets after WWII in the remaining bomb craters in Plymouth before working in Devonport dockyard. The more rarified atmosphere of today’s market does not necessarily suit him.
He said: “It’s a lot different now. I loved it back then when it was always packed with people coming in early for the best choice of food for the family. There was a real sense of it being a meeting place and an occasion because it wasn’t open all the time. It might have been smelly and noisy, but it was part of the atmosphere.”
However, even though the market has changed a lot, there are no thoughts of retirement for its oldest resident: “I like coming here and meeting people who were children then and now have their own grown-up children.”
