In my undergraduate days you could get most things in Oxford’s Covered Market – fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, secondhand books and records, and discounted jeans. It was also home to a couple of tea shops the provided a welcome refuge from the Bodleian Library when the afternoon energy gap yawned.
The Covered Market, tucked behind the High, has been serving both town and gown for about 230 years. It was originally built in the early 1770s as a way of tidying away the stalls that cluttered the city’s main streets. The architect was John Gwynn, who also designed Magdalen Bridge, but most of what we see today, including the intricate roof trusses, dates from a 19th-century rebuild. It’s thus a typical Victorian market hall, with partly glazed roof and stalls that are mostly enclosed like miniature shops. The shops are arranged along four aisles, which open up here and there into cross-passages and spaces bathed in light that comes in through the roof and the high windows.
Nowadays the Covered Market has quite a lot of gift shops that cater for the tourists who venture in off the High Street. But you can still buy all kinds of food there too, and the wholesome smell of veg and fish mean that the place retains the atmosphere of a market rather than a mall.
