CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nottingham has four fairs annually. Friday, after the 13th
of January, for cattle; 7th, 8th, and 9th of
March, for cheese and cattle; Thursday before Easter, cattle, &c., 2nd,
3rd, and 4th of October, the famous Goose Fair, partly a
pleasure and partly a business gathering. About the middle of the eighteenth
century an attempt was made to establish a Monday market on a piece of waste
ground lying between the west end of St. Peter’s church yard, Wheeler gate, and
Hounds gate. The country people, however, did not think proper to “take to it,”
and it very soon went down. The cross, which had a roof supported on four
pillars, was thereupon walled in and transformed into an asylum for the fire engines.
The sheep folds were removed thither from the great market place; and the
inhabitants had reason to congratulate themselves, if not on the establishment
of a new market, at least upon the paving and general improvement of a lonely
and ill-favored spot, lying in the very heart of the town, which had previously
borne a bad character.
Henry I. granted to Lenton Monastery “a fair of eight days at
the feast of St. Martin.” During that time no one was to buy or sell in
Nottingham, and all persons coming to Lenton fair were to be free from law
processes. Thus Lenton continued to centuries a market of great importance.
In DEERING’s time “nothing was so cheap as to render it
contemptible, nor anything requisite to a comfortable way of living so dear but
that the middling people in the respective seasons might have a share.” Bread
corn sold at from 3s.6d. to 4s. per London bushel; beef, veal, mutton, lamb,
and pork, at 3s. per stone of 14 lbs; butter, 4d. to 6d. per pound; and all
other edibles at a similar ratio. A green goose might be had for 6d.; the
highest price of a Christmas one was 2s.6d.
Though there existed no open market for game the hotel tables
and even private houses were plentifully supplied by the poachers. During the
season the Earl of Chesterfield and other neighbouring noblemen complimented
their friends in the town with venison.
In 1825 or 1826 the corporation, at a great expense, repaired
and flagged the market place, after which they charged an additional stallage.
This, producing in 1833 upwards of £1,000 a year, was raised in 1844 to £1,200.
Discontent and litigation accompanied the rise in the revenue. The burgess
formerly had to pay no more than a penny for his stall; now one penny per foot
was demanded. Tolls for baskets, carts, and sheep were increased. The
non-burgesses who kept stalls and many farmers made common cause, and
subscribed for the support of John GAINSLEY, a baker, who commenced two actions
in the Court of King’s Bench against the corporation for seizing part of his goods,
as payment of the toll. In the first of these actions the corporation
petitioned the court to stay proceedings and convict them in costs, which was
done. The corporation subsequently obtained a verdict, and the tolls were
established.
The cattle market is held
on Wednesdays, the sheep pens being set up on the south side of the market
place, from Beastmarket hill to Angel row; the cattle stand between the sheep
pens and Long row. The east portion of the market place is occupied by
tradesmen’s stalls and auction marts.
The Saturday market is attended by a vast concourse of county
gentlemen, farmers, corn millers, corn factors, butchers, hucksters, market
gardeners, curriers, tanners, and tradesmen. The mayors, sheriffs, and other
officers were wont to walk in procession to the Saturday market; the custom
ceased more than a hundred years ago.
The principal swine market is held in Parliament street on
Saturdays. This, as well as the Wednesday’s cattle market, will it is hoped be
speedily removed to a situation less objectionable, a large market place being
in course of formation near the Mansfield road.
The corn market (previously, and still partially, held at the
north-west corner of the Exchange,) is now held in the Corn Exchange, Thurland
street, a handsome building opened in 1850. It comprises an exchange room 77
feet by 55 and nearly 40 feet high, a clerk’s office, a newsroom, with suitable
offices, and a residence for a house-keeper. The approach is by a large inner
portico or colonnade, communicating with the chief room by wide folding doors
in the centre and with the office and principal staircase by doors on the side.
The room is lighted by a series of span roofs, entirely glazed with cast plate,
and supported by truss beams, with laminated bows, and with brackets resting on
carved stone corbels. The iron work is made ornamental by gilding, and by being
painted a rich blue. There are forty-five stalls, of elegant construction. The
exterior of the building presents a substantial and respectable appearance, and
is executed in brickwork, with moulded stone dressing. The style of
architecture is a combination of the English and Italian, and is after the type
of an old Latin school-house, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which is said to have
been designed by Sir Christopher WREN. The building cost altogether £3,000. The
news room is approached by a stone staircase, with arcades on each side of
clustered columns, which are made of polished Derbyshire spar marble.
Goose Fair formerly continued for twenty-one days ! It was,
until lately, one of the largest and most important fair in this part of the
kingdom, and was looked forward to with great anxiety by all the country round
as one of the principal holidays of the year. It has more than once been
celebrated in song. As it is still esteemed the great holiday of the year the
following pen-and-ink-sketch of the fair as it was in 1852 may not be
uninteresting:--
“The advent of the fair was apparent on Friday towards dusk,
when several shows had taken up their position in the market place, and when
skeleton and completed stalls began to arise out of vast accumulations of
planks and canvass. Shopkeepers, too, were seized with commendable entuasiasm,
cleaning out their windows, and decking them anew with the freshest and best of
everything. The clothiers displayed the flashiest cuts from Paris; boot and
shoe-makers’ premises were radiant with highly polished understandings;
booksellars’ windows shone in all the splendor of scarlet covered volumes;
while everything put on a holiday aspect, and everybody looked with a more
cheerful countenance at his neighbour.
The odour of beefsteaks proceeding from every back-parlour, and the sight of well plenished decanters and capacious baskets of jolly looking bottles popping into drapers’ and ironmongers’ shops, reminded the luckless townsman of country customers and the good things which goose fair sends their way. Little boys and girls made incursions among their kind uncles and aunts and other cherished friends; like juvenile Rob Roys, levying “black mail” from all and sundry. Promising little philosophers broke their earthenware savings’ banks, or rose in rebellion against mamma if she hesitated to deliver up the purse in which the accumulations of weeks had been so carefully hoarded. The appearance of a few shows raised the popular excitement to a higher pitch; forthwith every juvenile rallied round the paternal hearth, and if necessary proclaimed open rebellion unless the sinews of war were delivered into his hands so that he might go and do as every spirited juvenile has done from time immemorial – make a fair of it. On Saturday morning, the cattle market turned the town into a huge Smithfield, and the women folk either kept in doors or were vastly frightened if they ventured out. In the evening, among the promenaders on the Long row, were families gaily journeying homeward, each having evidently received an accession in some absent son or daughter who had made a laudable effort to leave business and unite with the good folks at home in enjoying the gaity of the fair time, sweetly cherished memories of which are preserved in the bosom of every Nottingham youth.
The light of day detracts greatly from the aspect of wooden theatres,
and an incessant drizzle and occasional heavy rains, thinned the ranks of
visiters. The tinsel was entirely stript from the theatrical booths, and the
luckless actors were obliged to shade themselves from the almost incessant
showers. Cheese did not go any the smarter on account of the rain either; but
inns and eating-houses and other places of refreshment were at a premium. Every
one, however, seemed desirous of making the most of the visit and the fair, and
the number of visitors, were fewer.
But there were exhibitions – some of them old, others new, and
all worthy of a passing glance. A dancing bear was led through the streets;
street clowns and hurdy-gurdy girls were plentiful as blackberries; while a
bearded lady was shown in the Assembly Rooms – the magistrates having
ungallantly refused her a site in the Market place, on the ground that she was
an ‘unnatural’ exhibition. HOLLOWAY vended the ‘legitimate drama’ in his huge
Sanspareil establishment. He was opposed by RAYNOR, by RYAN (who had pitched
his tent immediately under the shadow of the Romanist meeting-house), and by a
still more curious, and anonymous, squad who have taken up their quarters at
the foot of Park row. WOMBWELL’s son-in-law, Mr. EDMONDS, was there with his
highly respectable exhibition of living wonders and his no less respectable
band, which, with the music of the Imperial Mechanical Exhibition close by,
presented a most agreeable contrast to the harsh and inharmonious clang of
contending instruments.
WINROW’s ingenious views, a small portrait painting gallery, a
camera obscura, the Imperial Mechanical Exhibition before-mentioned, and
CLAPTON’s Views of the Great Exhibition, &c., were probably the most
rational sources of amusement in the Market place. Then there was a Royal
Caledonian Wax-work, all the way from St. Andrews, with a Scottish triumvirate
of barbarous bagpipers blowing might and main to bring the ‘siller’ to their
‘ain door;” the bazaars, fitted with all manner of hard and soft goods – from
tripe and oysters to fiddles and flageolets; the stalls, extending from the top
of Chapel bar, a mountainous region of toffy and ginger bread, nuts and
brandy-snaps; the customary array of shooting-galleries; an innumerable variety
of scientific machines at which you might test your height, weight, and
strength; with other attractive features too numerous to mention, made the
Market place, even in that rainy weather, a sight not to be sneezed at by the
lovers of those ‘good old times’ when Goose Fair was Goose Fair indeed.
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