This video makes it look a long time ago - it was a long time ago - but one of the major decisions Harborough District Council took while I was a member was the redevelopment of the cattle market site in Market Harborough.
It was a controversial decision and the farmers assured us the market was profitable. But when we offered them the chance to buy it, they went quiet. By all accounts, the new market site near Foxton did very well - having it in the town was not the visitor attraction that some claimed.
The idea of allowing a supermarket to built on the site was to discourage the building of out-of-town stores and keep trade in the centre of the town. That policy worked for over 30 years and is only now in danger of unravelling, with the building of a new Aldi store on Rockingham Road.
And we got a better retail market hall out of the scheme: you can see how unappealing the old one had become.
So enjoy this slice of Market Harborough history. I had forgotten the entrance buildings on Springfield and the headquarters building of the Leicester and Northamptonshire branches of the National Farmers' Union.
The narrator is Frank Berry, who was the chief executive of Harborough District Council in those days.
h/t Solar Pilchard on Bluesky. The video dates from 1992, not 1999.
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