Woodbridge Market
A third-Sunday market inside an 1890 Mechanics Institute hall on the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, in a building that has been the district's meeting place for well over a century.
About this market
Woodbridge Hall was built in 1890 on land donated by a prominent local, Thomas Edwards, as a Mechanics Institute with a library and a reading room at the front. It has been the meeting place of the D'Entrecasteaux Channel district ever since, and on the third Sunday of every month it becomes a market, 10am to 2pm.
A country market with a roof over it
The building explains the market's character. This is not a lawn full of gazebos: the stalls set up inside a Victorian Gothic hall with a supper room and a kitchen attached, which in southern Tasmania is a considerable advantage for eight or nine months of the year. The line-up leans towards makers rather than volume, with jewellery, woodcrafts, drinks, sweets, body care, clothing and accessories from producers around the Channel. The hall's own calendar puts the market alongside a bush band rehearsal, a knitting and mending group and a community association meeting, which is a fair description of how central the place still is. The building has been in council hands since 1960, when the committee handed it over to guarantee it stayed available to the district.
Market at a glance
The hall has spent well over a century absorbing whatever the district needed at the time, and it kept the fittings.
A local couple, Dick and Dinah Perry, screened films in this hall every week from 1926 until 1976, using a projection room built specially for the job the year after electricity arrived. Decades after the last screening, the hall's monthly calendar still carries a night called Perry's Pictures. Earlier still, in 1919, the building was prepared as an emergency hospital for troops returning through the Bruny Island quarantine station.
Good to know before you go
Third Sunday only, and 10am is a civilised start by market standards, so there is no need to be there at dawn. The market is indoors, which makes it one of the better wet-weather options south of Hobart, though the Channel Highway drive is the point of the trip on a clear day. Woodbridge sits on the Channel Highway south of Hobart, and the road continues towards Cygnet and the Huon if you want to keep going. Parking is on the highway and the surrounding streets.
Frequently Asked Questions
- When is the Woodbridge Market held?
- The third Sunday of the month, 10am to 2pm, in the Woodbridge Hall on the Channel Highway.
- What is the hall itself?
- It was built in 1890 as a Mechanics Institute on land donated by local resident Thomas Edwards, in the Victorian Gothic style, and was added to the Tasmanian Heritage Register in 1997.
- What sort of stalls are there?
- A country-style market of local artisans and producers: jewellery, woodcrafts, drinks, sweets, body care, clothing and accessories from makers around the Channel district.