Short answer: Open Tuesday to Saturday, 9am to 4pm, with a different market each day. Friday is the original Charter Market with the produce and the one to come for. It also opens on Sundays 7, 14 and 21 December and Mondays 15 and 22 December for Christmas.
That is the headline and the thing most visitors get wrong. Sunday and Monday the hall is shut for most of the year, and a surprising number of people drive to Tavistock on a Sunday specifically for the market and find a closed Victorian building.
Friday if you want the proper market experience — the Charter Market is the oldest part of it and the produce is the point. Tuesday if you are after antiques and collectables. Wednesday for crafts. If you simply want somewhere covered and interesting on a wet afternoon, any of them will do.
The hall opens outside its normal days in the run-up to Christmas: Sundays 7, 14 and 21 December, and Mondays 15 and 22 December. The Tavistock Christmas Festival itself is Sunday 6 December, 10am to 3.30pm, across Butchers Hall, the Pannier Market and Bedford Square, and the Butchers Hall Christmas markets run 11 to 23 December.
A covered Victorian market hall in the middle of a planned stannary town, and the reason Tavistock has been voted the best market town in Britain. It is properly indoors with a roof over the whole thing, which makes it a real option when the weather comes off the moor.
There is a café inside. The floor is level and there is room between the stalls for a buggy. Park free at the Meadows and walk in rather than paying for a town car park — it is a short, flat walk and the playground is there for afterwards.
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