THIS atmospheric picture of The Square in Petersfield on market day is a scene which would have been familiar to generations of townspeople.

Resident Neil Challen wanted to share it with Post readers because of its particular clarity depicting this regular event.

A copy of this picture is held in Petersfield Museum and is dated 1946.

Cattle for sale are tied up to railings on the east side, which are still present today while sheep – and possibly pigs – are in the smaller pens within The Square.

Buyers and sellers are gathered around the auctioneer who is conducting business near St Peter’s Church. This is probably Harry Jacobs, whose family business of Jacobs and Hunt was involved in the auctions for nearly 100 years.

Petersfield’s position in the centre of a farming community for centuries had greatly contributed to its prosperity and the livestock market was an essential part of the vitality of the town.

The late Victorian years and Edwardian times before the First World War probably were the busiest times for the fortnightly market but social change caused by the war was the beginning of the end for the traditional market.

During the Second World War, the Government took over all cattle, sheep and pigs sent for slaughter, which had changed the time-honoured system of direct buying and selling between farmers and auctioneers or between dealers and slaughterhouses.

Petersfield slaughterhouse, which was off The Causeway, where Tesco now stands, also was returned to private hands.

However, members of Petersfield Urban District Council who had been concerned for a number of years about the conditions for livestock in The Square, began pressing for a new site.

There had been instances of cattle breaking free from their tethers and running amok in the town and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) called for the market to be abolished because of the lack of water and shelter for animals which could be out in the open for seven hours. However, it was not until 1962, as a result of declining numbers of animals for sale, among other factors, which led to the ending of the regular livestock market in The Square.

Businesses, such as the inns in the town centre which had been patronised by farmers and other market suffered a little from loss of trade but gradually as the decade became more prosperous, the sale of animals became consigned to history.

One of the public houses in the picture, The Market Inn, which had been established in 1786, lasted until 2012. The premises has since become the clothing shop Joules.

Next door to it, the arches which were part of the old town hall building in front of St Peter’s Church are now incorporated into Cloisters cafe.

Visible behind the waiting cattle lorries is the furniture store of G Money and Sons, now demolished and the site of Petersfield Library and Register Office.

Next door was photographic dealer J Barrett, which was also replaced.