A GROWING weekly market has been described as a “community in the community centre” as more and more traders are signing up.

The Allendale Centre in Wimborne has been hosting its Minster Market every Friday morning since August 2020 and has taken on dozens more traders since the closure of the Station Terrace market.

Tanya Cripps, centre manager, said the feedback has been very positive and they are speaking with more traders to expand the market.

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She said: “We already had the market when we heard the Wimborne Market would be closing and we were approached by a couple of the traders.

“When they announced it was closing in December last year, we moved very quickly.

“We said to the guys, anyone who is interested come speak to us, we will do everything we can to help which is what we did.

“We built up internal space and external space and launched Minster Market bigger and better in January.”

The Minster Market operates between 8am and 2pm on Friday mornings and Ms Cripps said the only negative feedback they had was people asking them to trade more often.

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She continued: “It’s really gone from strength to strength. We have a waiting list of traders, and we fill them in as quickly as we can.

“We’ve got a great variety, everything you could find at a market. We are working really closely with all of our traders for them to integrate.

“The Minster Market has grown really quickly, and it is still growing. As long as the traders are happy and want to keep coming back, we are more than happy to have them back.

“It’s a great additional little community to the community centre.

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“The traders and the customers love the fact it’s in the centre of Wimborne.

“It’s been really positive, and we are continuing to look at adding a few more stalls a week.

“We have 44 traders this week and another 13 starting and a few more we are still talking to to find suitable locations.”