Christmas market to be held at The Barns Townhouse in Chichester

The Barn Little London and Townhouse announced the ‘Rare Brand Market’ this week. It follows the decision not to hold this event at Goodwood this year.

The founder, Emma Schwarz, said: “The time has come, with the opening of The Barn and Townhouse to have a Rare Brand market on the high street.

"I’m going to concentrate on making what we’re doing here really interesting from a retail point of view, so that people want to come to Chichester.

“One of the biggest problems we face at the moment in Chichester is getting more footfall, there’s been a decline in visitation and people need to be tempted to come back here.

“The idea of holding a pop-up Christmas market away from the high street isn’t attractive to me at all.

"We’re excited to hold a pop-up at The Barn’s Townhouse.

“We’re right on the high street and we would love to see people come here and see what’s on offer on all four floors, we’ve got a great gifts emporium for people to see."

When the event was announced on their social media, one follower described them as ‘The beating heart of Chichester’.

Emma Schwarz has been in retail since she was 16.

She joined Marks & Spencer's as a young manager on a training programme and proceeded to stay with them for 11 years.

She then carried on in retail in various different forms before returning to Chichester to have a family.

In that time, she also created the Rare Brand Christmas market that has been running for 14 years.

She said: “At the time of creating the market, I didn't believe in the high street very much and was worried pop-up retail and online retail was going to be where retail was at.

"My opinions have now changed, I have complete faith in the high street again, Covid made that even stronger and I firmly believe that Chichester has got to get behind independent retail.”

The address for The Barn’s Townhouse is 40 East Street, Chichester, PO19 1HX.