Wells Market Day: A Guide to the Wednesday and Saturday Markets

Wells has held a market in the Market Place for centuries, and it still runs twice a week. If you are planning a visit, market day is a good day to choose: the square fills with stalls from early morning, the city is at its liveliest, and everything worth seeing sits within a few streets of it. Here is what to expect, where to park, and how to make a morning of it.

When is Wells market?

Wells market runs every Wednesday and Saturday, 9am to 3pm, in the Market Place at the top of the High Street. Plenty of traders are set up and selling before nine, and the best of the fresh produce goes early, so the morning is the time to come. Stalls begin packing up through the early afternoon.

What you will find

It is a working food market rather than a tourist one, which is what makes it worth a detour. Expect:

• Fresh fish - there is usually a queue, which tells you most of what you need to know.
• Cheese - regional and West Country, with plenty to taste before you commit.
• Meat and charcuterie - free range and locally reared, alongside cured meats.
• Bread and bakery - loaves, pastries and cakes from Somerset bakers.
• Fruit and vegetables - seasonal, and mostly grown near here.
• Local beer and cider - Somerset producers, often pouring samples.
• Flowers, crafts and antiques - plus hot food to eat as you wander.

Parking on market days

The one thing worth knowing before you set off: you cannot park in the Market Place itself on Wednesdays or Saturdays, because the square is given over to the market. The perimeter car parks are the answer, and none of them are far.

• Union Street - the closest to the Market Place.
• Princes Road - beside the bus station, handy if you are arriving by coach.
• South Street
• Tucker Street

All are a few minutes' walk in, and the walk takes you past some of the prettiest parts of the city. One note on footwear: the Market Place is cobbled and uneven in places, so it is not the morning for your thinnest soles.

Making a morning of it

The Market Place sits directly between the High Street and the Cathedral, so the market slots neatly into a wider wander. Two medieval gateways open off the square: Penniless Porch and the Bishop's Eye, and walking through the first of them puts you on Cathedral Green in under a minute.

From there the Cathedral, Vicars' Close and the Bishop's Palace are all within a few hundred yards. If you want the full route, we have written a longer guide to things to do in Wells.

Where to stop for coffee or lunch

We open at 9am, the same time the market does, and we are a two minute walk away in Heritage Courtyard just off Sadler Street. It is a quiet cobbled courtyard set back from the street, which makes it a calm place to land with your shopping bags after an hour in a busy square.

Breakfast runs until 11.30am, lunch from 12pm to 3.30pm, and there is coffee and homemade cake all day. Dogs are welcome inside on a lead, with water bowls, which market mornings tend to call for.

Market day is also a bakery day for us. We are the only place in Wells stocking bread and pastries from The Newt's bakery, and they land on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, so you can add a sourdough loaf and a croissant to whatever you have picked up in the square.

Market cheese, and something to drink with it

Our favourite market day habit, and one we would recommend: buy the cheese at the market, then come and choose the wine. We are a wine shop as well as a kitchen, and David picks every bottle himself from small European growers, several of them exclusive to the UK. Tell him what you have bought and he will find something to go with it.

If you would rather not carry it home, any bottle from the shelves can be drunk in at the wine bar for a small corkage fee.

The Christmas market

Once a year the weekly market is joined by the Wells Christmas Market, which brings over a hundred festive stalls to the Market Place and Cathedral Green, with local food and drink, gifts and live music. It is the busiest day in the city's calendar. If you are planning ahead, we have more on Christmas at The Pressoir, and December books up early.

Find us

The Pressoir, 10 Heritage Courtyard, Wells, Somerset BA5 2RR. Open Monday to Thursday 9am to 4.30pm, Friday and Saturday 9am to 7pm, closed Sunday.

Heritage Courtyard is easy to walk straight past, so it is worth reading how to find us first, with directions, parking and buses. To book a table, email david@thepressoir.com.