The Covered Market is one of the gems of Oxford city centre, but you could easily walk past and not know it was there, as the existing signs are inadequate.
 
Oxford City Council has been promising to erect new entrance signs for the Market but at a planning meeting last week the design the Council put forward to the planning committee were refused on the grounds that they were unacceptable for a City such as Oxford and the signs were not in keeping with the Victorian city centre market.
 
The scheme would have seen four replacement signs, reading ‘Market’, installed above the High Street avenues and a banner and large sign, both reading ‘Covered Market’, installed in Market Street.
 
John Partington, owner of Chocology, said: “The signs are not so imaginative but they are better than what is there now, which are terrible. Millions of tourists happily walk down the High Street and they have no idea that a busy, independent market exists because they do not know where it is”
 
The rejection on the proposed designs was obviously very disappointing to The Covered Market as there has been such a long wait for these signs and the ones that are there at present are in a poor state of repair and aren’t eye catching enough to the general public.