Vellore market keeps historic trades alive amid wholesale bustle

A wholesale market in Vellore district continues to combine a busy modern trade with old businesses that have survived for generations. Vehicles, vendors and labourers fill its narrow lanes, while watch repairers, lantern sellers, tailors and musical-instrument specialists work from shops among vegetable and fruit stalls. The market was established in 1868, two years after the formation of Vellore Municipality, in front of the 16th-century Vellore Fort.

Historians say the site had earlier been used as a stable where horses from the fort were tethered. The market opened with at least 200 shops and expanded over time. It now has more than 700 permanent shops and 300 temporary shops, serving the everyday needs of the city and attracting traders and customers from across the region.

Fruits, vegetables, millet varieties, flowers and greens arrive in bulk from neighbouring States including Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. The produce is then distributed to different destinations. The flower trade begins during the night, with workers sorting and carrying consignments before sales begin at dawn.

The market’s history remains visible in its structures. A clock tower installed in 1911 stands at one of the main entrances. Its eastern gate also bears a foundation stone laid in 1914 by the then British Collector Marjoribanks Esquire and municipal chairman Khan Bahadur Habibullah Sahib.

An inscription on the clock tower records that 277 men from a village went to fight in the First World War between 1914 and 1919 and that 14 died in battle. The market was named Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Market by office-bearers of the Vellore Town Vegetable Merchants Association. Among the traders maintaining older lines of work are third-generation lantern seller G.

Arumugam, 91-year-old tailor S. Arunachalam, musical-instrument repairer D. Srinivasan and second-generation watchmaker R.

Karunakaran.