A family affair
Many of Manchester's market traders come from families who've been buying and selling produce for generations. Helen Clifton talks shop with the city's market families
Date Published: 09/04/2010 Updated: 13/08/2010
Steve Royle has been working in Wythenshawe Market since 1975, the second of three generations of his family to work in the butcher's trade
We do chicken beef, lamb, pork. You name it, we do it. We do the freezer packs - we do the full monty. If they want to come and spend a fortune, or spend a little, we are happy to see them anytime. I've actually worked in Wythenshawe since 1963. We used to have a shop on Missley Parade, which is not there now. But when they were pulling Missley Parade down, they gave us a concession in the market, which is how we came to be here.
It was my father's business originally. He started the business up in 1947. It's a family firm. My son works in the firm as well. We have another shop in Macclesfield, in a market there. Things have changed - you've just got to change with them, the best you can.
They are the salt of the earth the people here, they are lovely people. A lot of the traders here have been on this market a long time, so yeah, there's a good crack and people know a lot of people. They can have a laugh and a joke, which is nice, you know. They come in, and it's always, 'How you doing?' 'I'm going away,' and all this business, and they love it. But that's what a market is all about.
Wythenshawe Market Indoor Food Hall is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 9am to 5pm, and Wednesday, 9am to 1pm.
John Sivori's father came to England from Portofino in Italy in 1912. He established an ice-cream business in 1925. The family opened Sivori's Café in Gorton Market in 1972. John, who has worked in the family businesses since he was 14, still works in the café which is now run by his two sons, Steve and Peter
My father came from Italy when he was about 14. They were just peasants, very poor. He went to Wigan, then about seven or eight years later, he came to Manchester. There was a very established Italian ice cream firm in Manchester - Granelli's. Old man Granelli had five daughters, so all the Italians used to come from all over the North West to try and pick one of these girls.
My father had an ice cream pushcart and started working all round the streets of Gorton. Where this building (Gorton Market Hall) is now, this was the heart of where he worked. This is why we are quite well known in this area. He then made his own cart - because he couldn't afford to buy his own cart - and got a horse. In 1933 he purchased his own shop in West Gorton. He then opened his first factory in Thomas Street. Sadly the war broke out....some people had been here 70 years, but Churchill wanted them all interned. In 1942, he was interned in the Isle of Man. But war finished, father came back, and the business started blossoming.
There were eight children, and we started coming into the business. I'm the youngest. The brothers started going into the ice cream vans, and for the girls - because he had four boys and four girls, my father - he opened little milk bars. We had seven or eight shops in the Gorton area. The teenagers, they'd sit in the cafe, play records, and have a game of push penny. The lads would joke with the girls a bit, and at 10pm, my mum or my sister or whoever was running the shop would say come on now, it's time for you to be going home. And they'd go home. That's how it was.
Sadly, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Gorton area came under compulsory purchase order, and huge swathes were demolished. It decimated the area. Can you imagine, terraced houses, replaced with an avenue with about five houses in, and all the communities were split up, and sent to Hattersley and Haughton Green. It was better for some because they were getting nice houses, but they were being thrown out of where they'd been brought up. We were in the original ice cream factory until 1972, then we moved to Barlow Road, producing ice cream there, and sending it all over the country. We are still there now.
This particular cafe was opened in June 2009. Previously, we were in the food hall, which is just over the road opposite Tesco. We went in there when it opened in 1972, and it's amusing now to see some of these young girls coming in - and they're mothers now. My wife says, 'I remember serving you when you were so high!'
It was a gamble coming in here, but fortunately we do quite well. The move forward is for indoor markets.Outdoor markets are still going, but its a bit of a thing of the past now. The people of Gorton are used to some form of market. We're OK at the moment - we are hoping it just carries on like this.
Gorton Market is open Monday to Saturday, 9am to 6pm.
Craig Cooper has been running his Coopers Family Butchers and Delicatessen in Gorton Market for 15 years, working alongside his family.
We sell everything from cooked meats, which we produce ourselves, to Tittertons pies, which are produced to a hundred-year-old recipe, and lamb, beef, pork, all boned out, all done fresh everyday. I was born and bred round here, so I know all the customers personally. It's a good feeling really, and I do enjoy it. That's why I want the market to work.
People come to us because they have a bit of banter with us, we talk to them. We've got time for them, and that's what coming shopping and spending your money is all about. You go to a supermarket, and it's straight through the till and next please. I think people like to be treated differently when they are spending good money on good stuff. It just keeps the community together really. The redevelopment for the area has been fantastic. We've got good loyal customers, and they stick by you.
Gorton Market is open Monday to Saturday, 9am to 6pm.
Jonathan Dent has worked for the family-run Smith Sagar Fishmongers for 35 years. Smith Sagar opened his fishmongers in Burnley just after WWI, and Jonathan's father Lawrence Dent moved from Hull to run the business in 1958. Jonathan moved the business to New Smithfield Market in 1989, and his daughter Stephanie joined the company in 2002
I was far from forced into it - it was something I came into voluntarily. It was always something I was going to do. I absolutely love it. I couldn't imagine doing anything else. There's problems obviously, there's problems getting the fish, there's problems getting it out, there's problems getting it here, but its just a lovely life. There's something different going on every day. You're always learning. There's always something new happening in the trade. You meet people.
We have three core customers. We have the old-fashioned fishmonger, and the ones that are left are the really high-end ones, and they still do the job very, very well. We have a lot of business from what we call the catering fishmongers, who cater to the hotels and restaurants throughout the region. The other is the old-fashioned fish and chip shop. We still do our share of them.
There's a massive range now - far more than when I started 35 years ago. In the early days of my involvement with the fish trade it was very much UK fish. Now we depend on foreign imports of bass and bream from Greece, and tuna from the Indian Ocean. We also still do a lot of the staples, the cod, the haddock, the plaice. It's still in good stock further North.
New Smithfield Market is open Monday to Saturday, 2.30am to 1pm.
