All The Fun Of The Fair (30 September 1978)

Only three or four miles from my home when I was a boy an event called Lee Gap Fair was held annually.  In medieval times it had lasted three weeks, but by my time it had dwindled to a small horse fair on the first day of the three weeks, which we called “First o’ Lee,” and a mere pleasure fair on the last day, called “Latter Lee,” with no activity at all between.

“First o’ Lee” was quite exciting.  Horses and unbroken ponies were run around to show their paces and you had to keep a sharp look-out among the confusion or you would be knocked down.  Many boys played truant on that day and teachers accepted it – probably with the thought that the boys would learn more of the world by going to the fair than by staying in school that afternoon, even if they only watched the cheap-jacks and card sharpers.

Time was when such fairs were the greatest secular events of the year all over this country and also on the continent of Europe.  There were no big stores and hardly any shops as we know them.  Entertainment was available at the Christian festivals, or “feats,” and especially at the local church’s patronal festival.  But for special goods, like once-in-a-lifetime purchases, people waited for the annual fair of their neighbourhood to come round.

For this neighbourhood the fairings centre was Leighton Buzzard, perhaps because it had been a royal manor even in Saxon times.  For centuries it was a focal point for trade – more so than either Buckingham or Newport Pagnell.  That is why even as late at the 19^th century enclosure awards the road now called Whaddon Road at Newton Longville was described as Leighton Road, as well as the road from Newton to Stoke Hammond.  It could also be an inborn reason why Newton has always preferred to incline itself westwards and southwards rather than northwards.

In particular, Leighton was the site of the so-called Statute Fair.  These fairs were held at Michaelmas or shortly afterwards, partly as pleasure fairs, but especially as labour-hiring fairs.  Inevitably, both in Leighton and in Yorkshire they were known colloquially as “Statty” fairs and they continued into modern times.

For what happened at the Leighton “Statty” I can do no better than quote a former ploughboy who was born in the 1870s and who wrote nearly 70 years later:

“It was not merely a pleasure fair, but a hiring one.  Employers and workers went to the fair or market place and those who wanted a man or maid would look round those who stood on the hiring side of the High Street, the girls in print frocks, horse-keepers with their trademark of a knot of whipcord, shepherds with a wisp of wool on their hats and cowmen with a bit of cow hair.

BEHIND THE BARGAIN

“The employers would look out for the one they considered the most suitable and if both were satisfied the newly-hired worker was given a shilling to “bind the bargain” and had to go and live in the farmhouse and work for the next 12 months.”  (In Yorkshire the binding coin was known as a “godspenny”).

Some good farming stories from those days are still being told.  Once concerns a farmer who was badly in need of a good lad, but had failed to find one.  Eventually a lad appeared at the farm and asked him for a job.  He wasn’t much to look at and he frankly warned the farmer that he wasn’t much good at anything, either.  All he could promise was to do his best.  So the hard pressed farmer took him on.

On the first morning the farmer gave him a task, but he kept his eye on him and soon took him off.  Then he sent him on a clearing up job, but when he went to see how he was getting on, he found things in a worse mess than when he had started.

By this time the farmer was wondering what he could do with the lad.  But, to give himself time to think about it, he told the lad to go over to the turnip patch and take one to the farmhouse for their dinners.

“How big?” asked the lad.

“Oh, as big as your head,” said the farmer in exasperation.

So the lad left and the farmer was still awaiting his return when a neighbour passed by.

“I see you’ve managed to get a new lad, but I’m puzzled by what he’s doing,” said the neighbour.

“Oh, why?”

“Well, he’s getting up your turnips one after another and trying his cap on ‘em!”

Then there is a story about a young chap who was the opposite of that one.  He lived in, and worked well and his master was pleased with him.

A regular duty of a liver-in was to see that animals were shut up and that everything was secure for night.

On one occasion when this lad was locking up, the farmer was surprised to see that he was carrying a lighted lantern though it was not yet quite dark.

“What are you doing with that lantern, Jeff?” asked the farmer.

“I’m going a-courting,” said Jeff.

“What! Taking a lantern to go a-courting?  I never had a light when I went a-courting”, said the farmer.

“Anybody might know that what has seen the missus, maister,” replied Jeff.

She was not noted for her beauty!