The good news is that the old iron came off cleanly. The bad news was underneath it.

Hallam & Stroud’s crew of eight completed Phase 1 of the Bramblegate Market eastern wing roof repair on Saturday — twelve days after scaffolding went up on 24 March, and roughly on schedule. The entire run of damaged galvanised-iron sheeting, approximately forty metres along the eastern pitch, has been stripped and lowered in sections to the yard behind the fish stalls. It sits there now in a neat stack, rusted through in places, each sheet bearing the manufacturer’s stamp from 1971 — the last time the eastern wing was reroofed.

Phase 2 — the timber work — began Monday morning. It was expected to be straightforward: replace the four cracked rafters identified in the initial survey, reinforce the ridge beam, and prepare the framework for new iron. By Monday afternoon, the estimate had changed.

Three load-bearing joists, concealed beneath the original iron and a layer of tarred felt that had not been disturbed in fifty-five years, were found to be rotten. Not cracked, not weathered — rotten, soft as cake, the result of decades of water ingress through pin-holes in the iron above. The tarred felt had trapped the moisture rather than shedding it.

“The felt was the problem,” said the site foreman, a man named Hendricks who has worked for Hallam & Stroud for eighteen years and who speaks about timber with the quiet authority of long acquaintance. “If they’d left the iron bare, the water would have run through and dried. But the felt held it. Like putting a wet cloth on good wood and leaving it for fifty years.”

The additional work — removing the three joists, sourcing replacement oak of matching dimension, cutting and fitting — will add an estimated 1,800 florins to the project cost and approximately three working days to the schedule. Market Warden Phillip Catton, reached on Tuesday, said the revised completion date is now 18 April, pushed from the original mid-April target.

“Still before the spring lectures start,” he said. “Still before the exhibition season. Three days is three days. We’ve waited fifty-five years for someone to look under the felt. We can wait three more days.”

The market has remained open throughout the work. The three stall holders displaced from the eastern wing — Neville Alderman (shellfish), Mrs Florence Gowan (herbs and dried flowers), and Raymond Keel (fish) — continue to operate from temporary positions within the wing. Keel, whose ice supply requires proximity to the market’s shared cold store, has managed by running a handcart between his temporary stall and the cold room six times a day.

“Keeps me fit,” he said, without conviction.

Alderman, whose shellfish stall has occupied the same position for thirty-one years, watches the work from his temporary spot with an expression that combines professional patience with personal impatience. “I can hear them up there,” he said. “Sawing and hammering. It’s a market, not a building site.” He paused. “But the roof needed doing. I’ve been saying it needed doing since 2018.”

Phase 3 — the new galvanised-iron sheeting — is expected to begin early next week, weather permitting. The forecast for Thursday calls for rain, which will test the temporary canvas that has been in place since March. Hendricks says the canvas will hold. He sounds like a man who has said this before and been right often enough to believe it, but not so often as to be certain.