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Chris Berry pays a visit to Northallerton Auction Mart as it marks 100 years of trading, to look at both its history and its future.
Livestock markets have long been the bedrock of the cattle and sheep world. It is largely accepted that they set the price by which stock is sold elsewhere too, whether trading privately or supplying straight to abattoirs. Without them livestock producers would find life far more difficult.
That message was rammed home to farmers during the Foot and Mouth crisis of 2001 when livestock could not be moved in the same way. There were many instances of purchasers taking advantage of livestock markets being in limbo, who slashed the price they paid knowing that farmers had nowhere else to go. It was a timely reminder of the benefit of competition around a sale ring.
Driffield and Ripon's livestock markets never reopened after the crisis. Stokesley, Bingley, Otley Bridge End, Pannal, Wetherby, Masham, Penistone, Doncaster and Seamer have all become casualties in the past three decades, but one livestock market is celebrating 100 years of trade this year.
Applegarth Mart, better known as Northallerton Livestock Market and with a business name of Northallerton Auctions, started life over a century ago in 1907, tucked away just 100 yards off the High Street. It was 1912 when the mart itself came into existence, leading to the way it is run today. Previously it had been...