I READ with interest the recent article in the Ledbury Reporter about Ledbury's Charter Market and Farmers' Markets. There was also an article a few weeks ago about a proposed redevelopment of the Depot site on Bye Street opposite the Job Centre and currently used as a bric-a-brac emporium.

Although the Charter Market has traditionally been held beneath and around the Market House, there is so much traffic and congestion in the High Street nowadays that perhaps a new venue should be considered - particularly if the Charter Market is to be significantly increased in size and a Farmers' Market reintroduced on an occasional basis.

Could consideration please be given for the design and funding of a traditionally styled open-sided covered market house on the site of the Depot? It could be a Victorian-style glass covered market house, supported by suitable ornamental cast iron columns, perhaps enclosed at the rear - and incorporating an electricity supply and lavatories, yet allowing some produce trailers to be manoeuvred into place in addition to traditional stalls.

Bye Street could be made one-way down to Market Street and with a widened pavement from the library to Lawnside Road - Woodleigh Road also being made one way in the direction of New Street, thereby making life easier for the residents and improving the traffic flow.

With so many charity shops and un-let shop units in Ledbury are more shops and office buildings on the Depot site really necessary? And would such a development be sympathetic to Ledbury's vernacular architecture? (The new hospital owes more in style to a pseudo-Scandinavian Aviemore ski centre of the 1960s - but then architects don't seem to like half-timbered pastiche, which might have been more suitable for Ledbury!).

MR H BRITTON JOHNSON, Clencher's Mill Lane, Eastnor, Ledbury.