Expansion of Trade

In a largely rural agricultural area, Thame market played a key role in the town. In 1722, novelist Daniel Defoe described it as ‘a great corn market’, and in 1746 said it was ‘well furnished with live cattle and all other provisions and necessaries’. The Georgian houses in the High Street indicate the prosperity of the upper-class townsman in the early 1700s.

An apothecary’s shop: interior. Watercolour by Lucy Pierce.
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.

New trades developed during the Georgian era including attorneys, apothecaries, clockmakers, saddlers and whipmakers. However, the craftsmen and shopkeepers of Thame were dependent on the prosperity of the surrounding agricultural area. After the Napoleonic Wars had ended, Thame experienced a depression from 1815 to 1818.