The trade of a country market-town, especially when that market-town, like Woolbury, dates from the earliest days of English history, is hereditary.
It flows to the same store and to the same shop year after year, generation after generation, century after century.

The farmer who walks into the saddler's here goes in because his father went there before him.
His father went in because his father dealt there, and so on farther back than memory can trace.

It might almost be said that whole villages go to particular shops.

You may see the agricultural labourers' wives, for instance, on a Saturday leave the village in a bevy of ten or a dozen, and all march in to the same tradesman.

Of course in these latter days speculative men and 'co-operative' prices, industriously placarded, have sapped and undermined this old-fashioned system.