When I was little, I used to get taken on Clitheroe Market by what I can only recall as a distorted chimera of genetic material, taunting me with my future visage. You don’t go to Clitheroe Market. You go on Clitheroe Market, as you would go on hallowed ground. After a hapless wander of the open air, between fruit and veg, discounted women’s clothing, and butchered meats of all varieties, the familial homunculus would usher me beyond the threshold of a beaded curtain into Jimmy Clitheroe’s pebbledashed and flat-roofed cafe. I used to think it was named in honour of my father – him being named Jimmy and being from Clitheroe, and all. It was only as I got older that I began to notice the cafe was adorned in the ephemera of Jimmy Clitheroe, the comedian who would masquerade as a cheeky school boy on BBC Radio in The Clitheroe Kid. I’d watch from the window as cheeky school boys would navigate the alleys of the quaint English bazaar through to the sweet shop to buy candy cigarettes and temporary tattoos, giggling and cursing and pretending to be older.

Clitheroe is a limestone market town with a history lost in repurposed mills. It forms the administrative centre of the Ribble Valley, lying between Pendle Hill, Waddow Fell, and straddling the gentle waves of the River Ribble. It is often high up on those lists of best places to live in the UK, carefully curated by property and lifestyle marketers to ensure you don’t think they are an advertisement. Take a walk down the high street and you’ll see the banshee of memory, the ghost of a traditional England that haunts itself: a cobblestone street named Strang Stee (changed by local graffiti artists to Strange Steeve); the looming, monolithic watch of England’s purportedly second smallest Norman keep; and quirky and independent local retailers. Cheques from the Ribble Valley Borough Council Tourism Board should be made out to Sue Denim.

As with all small towns caught between the contradictions of tradition and modernity, if you’re on the razz on a Friday night, you’ll flit between a smattering of low-lit bars like you’ve fallen a backwards stretch through a Hollyoaks serial, only with the feeling that nothing happens there when it’s where you grow up.

I bring this all up because I was recently rapt by a story in the news, drawn in by the picture attached. There was no mistaking Clitheroe Market’s limestone flags and cursive stall signs, boldly presented on BBC News with the accompanying headline:

CRACKDOWN ON ‘FOUL-MOUTHED’ MARKET TRADERS

The article goes on to say that “A new code of conduct has been introduced to tackle bad behaviour at a popular market after allegations of traders shouting at each other and swearing at council workers. […] Andrew Dent, the council’s environmental health chief, said: ‘Generally, traders there are cordial. However, sometimes there has been a tendency to deviate from this.’”

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a perverse interest in salacious gossip, having idly spent the days investigating celebrity blind items whilst working a retail job. Did you know who he was really with when he came off that bike in Italy? I now haunt two Clitheroe Gossip Facebook groups. More often than not, these are spaces where people seek advice or local businesses try to drum up their online presence, but every so often somebody announces that they have reported a neighbour to the RSPCA and an argument spills out into the comments section. This was more common around between 2018-2022, and local contention seems to have taken the backfoot, but the wording of the BBC News article stirred the people of Clitheroe.

“What a load of bolloxs,” Bishbashbosh25 commented. There were messages of support for the traders and one local, Kath, aptly questioned: “where is the actual proof and if it’s true is the actual trader still trading on the market?”

Bespoke Picture Framing by Alexander explained that “it all started when the market supervisor tried to charge some outside traders for the extra stalls they were using.” He goes on to say how one of these outsiders suggested they tell the supervisor to fuck off and not pay.

It was this proof, or lack of it, that drew me back on Clitheroe Market to get the perspective of the traders, which seemed to be lacking from national news. Was Clitheroe a cradle of curse words or not? I had to find out.

Market traders were reluctant to talk at first, or at least viewed me with an air of suspicion. Fair enough, really. They’d been slabbered about in the press. Oliver from the eponymous Oliver’s Fishmonger’s let me know that it was “ridiculous” they’d made national news. “We’ve been on the market 20 years and never heard owt like that,” he says. His colleague, Joanna, warns me that – like the salmon – “it should be taken with a pinch of salt.”

I’d forgotten that here there is an incessant sideways drizzle that soaks you to the bone, so when the wind changed and the horizontal downpour drew in, I ducked my head inside a market gazebo selling womenswear and met Abu. Abu has been on the market as long as I can remember, and before I speak to him, he’s engaged in a long conversation with a local – not really about much, but simply catching up in his warm, personable manner.

He tells me that the article, and especially its headline, is “spreading the wrong rumors about this market, which are untrue.” He introduces me to Yvonne, a representative for the market. Abu and Yvonne are in agreement. “It is appalling that they would make such a big deal of somebody mentioning something without a proper investigation,” Yvonne says.

“Where was the evidence? Where was the council to back us? They didn’t seem to look into it but they gave us a letter about the code of conduct. Why didn’t the council come see all the traders? Why wasn’t there a meeting?”

Yvonne later tells me that she had a customer that day who’d been warned not to go on Clitheroe Market because, apparently, “they all swear and fight with each other”.

It hasn’t all been bad. One of the traders, Eileen, says that they have had a lot of support. She herself posted on the Clitheroe Gossip group with up to 398 responses, all of them positive. “It’s not a sweary market,” she declares. “Is it ‘eck? You only have to look around the traders. None of us are bits of kids.”

“Somebody’s worded it completely wrong and actually it’s very important how you put words on, isn’t it?” Mavis, one of Eileen’s customers, chimes in. “Just a few words would change the whole thing.”

Mavis is right. The headline uses the plural, seeming to make out that this is a widespread problem and that the market is occupied by belligerent traders ready to howl hot-white grief at any moment. The general feeling from traders is that they could have been better protected against the damage to their reputation by simply having an open dialogue and a thorough investigation before allegations of a swear word used at a market became national news.

The Clitheroe I know is a place where folk tales course through the blood all slow like rain running down the limestone incline of the quarry. Accused witches dob each other in on Pendle Hill, duckweed skinned river hags pull children to the Ribble’s depths at Edisford, and the vengeful spirit of the murdered Peg O’Nell claims one more life every seven years at the banks of Waddow Hall. As I leave Clitheroe again, I can only think this is what it is: an extension of the cautionary folk tales my mother would tell me as a child as we walked the banks of the river.

Go on Clitheroe Market and you’re sure to find warm reception from Abu and Yvonne, locals who could tell you a thing or two about the way things were, and an infectious giggle from the staff at Blueberries cafe. Beyond the beaded veil, through the lens of Jimmy Clitheroe’s caf as a child, faded bunting flutters against wind and sideways rain, an old boy curses the weather and, in the hollow of the council chambers, a new code of conduct is issued against such things.

Illustrations by Phoebe Verity.