How the stall works
Every market day the stall is built from nothing and packed away again by the afternoon. This page shows how it goes up, why the canopy is pitched the way it is, how the table is laid out — and offers the planner we use ourselves to size a pitch, for anyone setting up a stall of their own.
Forty minutes from an empty pitch to an open stall
Two people, one van, a frame, a canopy and the crates.
Off the van, in the reverse of how it went in
A pitch starts as nothing: a rectangle of paving with a number painted on it, or a gap between two neighbours who arrived earlier. Everything the stall is about to become is still folded in the back of a van, and the order it comes out decides how the next hour goes.
So the van is packed the night before to empty in the order the stall is built. What goes up first comes off first. Nothing is set down on wet stone if it can be carried straight to where it belongs, and nothing is carried twice.
The fastest morning is not the one with the most hands. It is the one where nobody has to move a crate to reach the crate behind it.
- Frame and canopyThe roof goes up before anything underneath it needs a roof.
- Trestles and boardsTables are levelled while the ground around them is still clear.
- Cloth and corner weightsThe cloth goes on, with a weight in each corner against the first gust.
- Heavy crates to the backRugs, boxed appliances and stacks of books stand behind the table edge.
- Small things lastMugs, toys and anything light come out for the front of the table.
The canopy decides where the rain goes
A canopy over a market table has one job that matters more than shade. When it rains, the water has to land somewhere that is neither the goods nor the person standing in front of them. So the canopy is pitched with a fall towards the back, and its front edge reaches past the table by a hand’s width or more.
Then the frame is checked for square, the legs are weighted, and the valance — the scalloped strip along the front — goes on last. It is the one part of a stall that is there only to be seen, and the first thing a buyer notices from the far side of the square.
Laid out so the eye travels from the front edge back
Small, light things sit at the front, where a hand can reach them without leaning over anything. Bigger goods stand behind them on crates, so a passer-by sees three rows at once instead of one. Nothing hides behind something taller: a row that cannot be seen is a row that is not there.
Every object gets its own space on the cloth. A table where things touch reads as a pile; a table with a finger’s gap between them reads as a choice somebody made.
Plan a pitch
Give the planner the size of a pitch and of your tables: it works out how many tables stand along the front, how big a canopy keeps the rain off, how many crates lie face-up on the cloth, and whether everything goes in one van trip.
The planner
Why the starting figures are what they are
Every figure the planner opens with can be changed, and should be, the first time you measure your own equipment. They are where they are for reasons that hold on most markets.
1.8 metres of table
The common folding trestle is 180 centimetres long and 75 deep: long enough to carry a proper display, short enough for one person to carry and for two of them to fit along a three-metre pitch with room to spare.
60 centimetres at each end
A pitch is shared with its neighbours’ customers. Leaving a clear strip at both ends lets a buyer step between two stalls without walking round the back, and it stops two canopies from dripping onto each other.
80 centimetres to work in
Behind the tables somebody has to stand, turn round, kneel to a crate and stand up again. Less than about 80 centimetres and every one of those movements knocks something. If the planner shows the working space running out, take a table off or ask for a deeper pitch.
30 centimetres of overhang
The canopy is sized to reach 30 centimetres past the front of the tables and past each end of the row, with a fall to the back. That is the distance at which drips from the front edge miss the goods. The canopy depth also covers the working space, because the person behind the table needs the roof as much as the stock does.
Four fifths of a van
No van is ever loaded to its last centimetre; crates do not tessellate with wheel arches. The planner counts four fifths of the load space you give it, adds the crates, the folded tables and the packed frame, and rounds the number of trips up.