MARKET traders in Felixstowe are back in the town centre on their usual weekly pitches - and have thanked their loyal customers for sticking with them.
MARKET traders in Felixstowe are back in the town centre on their usual weekly pitches - and have thanked their loyal customers for sticking with them.
The Thursday market had to be moved for more than three months to allow work to take place on a £1.2million revamp of the resort's East of England Co operative Society shops complex.
But now the work has been completed the stallholders have been allowed back on to the forecourt of Great Eastern Square and the old railway platform.
Greengrocer David Downes, who has not missed a Thursday's trading for 24 years, said everyone was delighted to be back in Hamilton Road.
“We are all really pleased to be back in the town centre,” he said.
“We want to thank the Co-op for their consideration and help and also to thank our loyal customers for their support over the past few months.
“Many of them each week were coming out of their way to find us on the temporary site and it was very much appreciated.
“Now we have returned people are coming up and saying how lovely it is to see us back again.”
Mr Downes, of Henley Road, Ipswich, said a few stalls had been lost but efforts would take place to get them back or replace them with new stalls.
Stallholders saw their takings cut in half by the move but most were determined to stick it out so they could return.
“Hopefully, we will be back at full strength again within a few weeks,” he said.
The stalls used a patch of ground at the junction of High Road West and Garrison Lane as a temporary site. The fresh fish stall managed to squeeze on to a site at the corner of St Andrew's Road.
Co-op bosses said the market could not stay on the precinct forecourt during the refurbishment work because health and safety regulations prohibited trading after it was ruled that the scaffolding needed for external repairs and redecoration represented a danger to the public.
Are you pleased to see the market back at Great Eastern Square? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN, or e-mail EveningStarLetters@eveningstar.co.uk
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