General Market, Wrexham

The General Market (Welsh: Y Farchnad Gyffredinol; or Marchnad Gyffredinol) is an indoor market in Wrexham city centre, North Wales. It is situated inside a Grade II listed building between Wrexham's Henblas Street and Chester Street on a site formerly known as Manchester Square. Built in 1879 as the Butter Market, it is one of the two dedicated indoor markets of Wrexham.

The indoor market has since suffered from declining visitor numbers over the last few years, and as a result Wrexham County Borough Council announced plans to re-develop the indoor market between 2023–24, with it reopening in November 2024.

The market has entrances via Henblas Street, Henblas Square and Chester Street. The main building and the shops located around its exterior are Grade II listed buildings.

The market contains around 20 stalls, including for clothing, food, florists and greengrocers, and is the smallest of Wrexham's markets, with the other markets being the Butcher's Market and Tŷ Pawb (previously the People's Market).

The building is made of a top-lit market hall, with a row of six shops along the building's front with Henblas Street (such as 21 to 29a Henblas Street), and a public toilet on its south-eastern corner. Of the Henblas Street shopfronts, some retain part of their original designs, especially for the northern range which houses shops, containing recessed doorways and iron-framed windows. The exterior is composed of screen walls, containing exterior shops and the market's entrance to its interior. The one-storey screen walls are made of red Ruabon brick, with freestone ashlar dressings and terracotta enrichments. It has a parabolic slate roof with continuous glazed clerestory, with ornate traceries in the north-facing gable. The building has brick pilasters, panelled parapets with diaperwork and paterae, while the shopfronts have a continuous stone cornice. A raised parapet is present over the western entrance to the market, with volute brackets, and panelled lintel ironwork double gates.

The market's main entrance, facing at an angle south-west towards the Butcher's Market, has a flat-topped raised gable with stepped corbels to an Italianate Romanesque parapet, a Prince of Wales motif–marked stone keyblock, and a patterned tympanum with a brick panel defaced with "1879" under a pilaster-flanked round arch. The building also has a recessed moulded lintel with the inscription "General Market", and oculi-set patterned panels. The building's other entrance has scrolled screen walls to paired iron gates. There may be remains of Wrexham's cockpit in the building's rear wall. The interior is made of 5 bays with side-aisles for market stalls, and with tall round arched girders arising from ornamental cast-iron capitals over a set of octagonal columns with brackets to horizontal beams over the market's ground floor. Openwork metal brackets are present in the building between trusses and had a tongue and groove boarded roof, with metal stays and top lanterns with one boarded end fanlights.

The market is situated on the former site known as "Manchester Square", which held an open market for out-of-town traders, particularly those from Manchester selling textiles, during annual fairs in the town. The square was later converted into Manchester Hall, and still selling linen, cotton and other fancy goods from Manchester. The site was also home to a smaller building housing a "Potato Market", and a music hall, with both demolished in the 1870s.

The General Market was opened in 1879, and was originally named the "Butter Market". This name was indicative of its main original purpose as a trading place for selling (farmhouse) butter and other dairy products. It is said the wives of farmers competed with each other to sell butter to customers. However, the introduction of rationing in the United Kingdom during World War II in 1939 and new hygiene regulations caused the market to be converted into a "general market", with the tradition of selling farmhouse butter greatly reduced. In 1943 the ("butter") market served as a cafeteria for the Acton Park–based 33rd Signals Construction Battalion and 400th Armoured Field Artillery Battalion of the United States Army Medical Corps. There are no remains of "Manchester Square" nor of many of the Victorian structures in the area following the market's construction.