Fettlers: Reinventing the Market Town
Wigan has been a market town since 1246. But like so many town centres, decades of retail decline had done real damage. When Wigan Council purchased the failing Galleries shopping centre in 2018, the scale of the challenge was clear, and so was the opportunity.
The brief was to reinvent what a market hall could be in a modern sense. Not a nostalgia project. Not a generic food hall. A genuine social anchor for a new neighbourhood, and a reason for people to choose Wigan again.
Welcome to Fettlers
Sheila Bird Studio was brought in to lead the design of the market hall, the centrepiece of Fettlers, a £135m regeneration project transforming the former Galleries site into a new mixed-use neighbourhood. Working alongside Wigan Council, development partner Cityheart, operators Northern Lights Group/ PlaceCo, and JM Architects, we took the project from community consultation through to full interior concept.
The creative strategy was built from the town's own identity. The name Fettlers comes from Wiganese dialect, to fettle means to fix, mend, make better, a reference to the skilled metalworkers who once powered the local economy. That idea runs through every design decision: a space that honours what came before while being built entirely for how people want to spend time now.
Designing a New Beating Heart
The result is a 75,000 sq ft market hall combining a food hall, traditional market stalls, contemporary bars, workshop spaces, winter gardens and a central atrium with bleacher seating. Outside, Woodcock Square adds outdoor trading and event space. The layout is designed to drive movement and dwell time across the whole building, so footfall works for every trader, not just those nearest the entrance.
“The market hall at Fettlers will be first-class, anchoring the wider scheme and, as markets have done for centuries, acting as a place for people to meet, eat, greet and trade.
Sheila Bird Studio have helped set the creative tone for this ambitious scheme with their trademark design flair, energy and passion for community placemaking.”
Darren Jones
Development Director, Cityheart
A Catalyst for Change
The market hall steel frame is already rising above Market Place, with the hall due to open Christmas 2026, followed by a 144-bed Hampton by Hilton and a leisure building housing a cinema, bowling alley and indoor mini-golf. Over 400 homes complete the neighbourhood across later phases.
It all sits within a broader £1bn investment into Wigan's regeneration, but the market hall is the piece that has to work first and work hardest. Get it right and it de-risks everything else.
