Ripon Market Day Gets a Boost

Ripon Market Day Gets a Boost as Thursday Footfall Jumps 31%

Thinking of visiting Ripon on a Thursday? There’s now another reason to make a day of it.

Free live music, family entertainment and Ripon’s traditional market are creating a livelier Thursday atmosphere — and new figures show city-centre footfall has jumped by almost a third.

Market Day Melodies, funded by Ripon City Council, has been bringing music to the Marketplace throughout July and August.

And it appears visitors aren’t simply coming into Ripon — they’re staying much longer too.

🎵 Ripon Thursdays are getting busier

Across four comparable Thursdays this summer, Ripon recorded:

• 76,142 visits in 2026
• 58,191 visits in 2025
• 17,951 additional visits
• 30.8% increase in footfall

During two school-holiday Thursdays, the increase was even bigger at 41.3% compared with the equivalent dates last year.

⏰ Visitors are staying more than twice as long

Perhaps the most striking figure is how long people are spending in Ripon.

Average Thursday dwell time has risen from:

1 hour 7 minutes → 2 hours 30 minutes

That’s an increase of 124%.

So if you’re heading into Ripon for the music or market, it seems you’re increasingly likely to stay for lunch, browse the shops or explore more of the city.

🎶 What’s happening on Thursdays?

Market Day Melodies brings free live music to Ripon Marketplace from 11am until 2pm every Thursday throughout July and August.

This summer’s performers have included:

• The Cherry Tones
• Roving jazz musicians
• A harpist
• Local musician Freddy Cleary

There’s also free children’s face painting on school-holiday Thursdays, making Market Day an easy option for families looking for something to do during the summer break.

❤️ Make more of your Thursday in Ripon

Coming for the music? Don’t rush home afterwards.

You could browse Ripon Market, wander around the city’s independent shops, stop for coffee or lunch and spend some time discovering the historic city centre.

It’s exactly the kind of wider benefit Ripon City Council hoped the programme would create.

Councillor Andrew Williams, Mayor of Ripon, said:

“We made this investment for a very clear reason: to give people another reason to choose Ripon on a Thursday, enjoy the market and then spend time exploring the shops, cafés and businesses around it.

“These early results are genuinely encouraging. Footfall across the comparable Thursdays is up by 31%, and the figures indicate that visitors are also staying much longer.”

He added that while no single event could account for every additional visit, the results suggested that creating a welcoming and lively Marketplace was helping Ripon’s traditional Market Day work harder for the whole city centre.

📈 Ripon bucks the national trend

Ripon’s increase comes against a more difficult picture for Britain’s high streets.

The British Retail Consortium reported a 3.8% year-on-year fall in UK high street footfall during its July monitoring period.

Meanwhile, Ripon City Council says overall daily footfall across the week increased by 14%.

The local figures were supplied by Ripon BID’s footfall data provider, with Great Yorkshire Show week excluded from both years to make the comparison fairer.

📅 Catch the final Market Day Melodies

Thursday 27 August 2026
11am–2pm
Ripon Marketplace
Free

If you’ve not experienced Market Day Melodies yet, there’s one final chance this summer.

Come for the music, browse the market, grab something to eat and give yourself time to explore Ripon — you might discover somewhere new.