The St. Thomas Easter Fair: 1820-1900
By Dr. Jill A. Sullivan, Associate Research Fellow, University of Exeter
In the nineteenth century the annual St. Thomas Easter Fair drew crowds of revellers, eager to enjoy the traditions and novelties offered by the various showmen. However, despite its evident popularity for many, the fair was also the subject of disapproval and regret. Newspaper reviewers could applaud the colourful scene, yet also decry the gambling and suspected immorality that took place at the fairground. Diarists recollected the traditional games and rides and the showmen grumbled at the changing locations west of the river Exe. Using archive and newspaper sources, this essay offers a glimpse of the fair in the nineteenth century through the characters and commentators who recorded it each year.
Origins and locations
The Easter Fair had its origins in the medieval history of Exeter, when five new fairs were introduced into the religious calendar.[1] A fair on Ash Wednesday at the beginning of Lent had been established in 1374 for which, according to the historian Maryanne Kowaleski, 'there is no evidence that the citizens of Exeter ever bothered to obtain a charter. Nor did they obtain one for another fair they began about thirty years later in 1431. The fair took place on Good Friday'. In 1500 or 1501 the latter fair was extended to the Wednesday and Thursday before Easter.[2] Initially, as with other annual fairs, the Easter Fair would have been essentially a trading fair, but all such events would have been visited by itinerant entertainers and eventually an accompanying pleasure fair became established in the St. Thomas area. By the 1800s it was the pleasure fair rather than the market fair that had survived.
In 1877, the local diarist James Cossins recalled the Easter Fair of the 1820s, in an essay published in the Exeter Flying Post. In this piece, Cossins recollected that
[t]he various standings - consisting of toys, confectionery, fruits, oysters, cockles, &c - were taken up in the street, commencing at the pit to the church (no doubt many readers are not aware of the situation of the then pit, it was the site of the present railway station, and was about four feet below the roadway - consisting of an inn, blacksmiths shop, and a dwelling house, almost adjoining Beaufort House, which was originally the County Gaol). Opposite, in front of the debtors' ward, were booths for theatrical performances, shows, swings, boats, merrigorounds [sic], &c., &c. There being no police regulations, footballs were freely used in the streets, much to the annoyance of the stand keepers, the rickety ones sometimes having to succumb. If a fine day it was an animated sight in the three large fields leading to Cowick; dotted all over with the rising generation playing rounders, kicking footballs, &c., whilst drop the handkerchief, kiss-in-the-ring, &c., were numerously patronised in the secluded corners.[3]
The streets and fields of St. Thomas remained the principal site for the fair; in 1830, a reporter for Woolmer's Exeter and Plymouth Gazette considered that the location was less than desirable 'standing as it does so near the "Debtor's Door," & terminating its western boundary with a contagious prospect of the Lunatic Asylum'.[4] By 1835 the increase in shows and booths, plus 'the depositaries for the Sale of sweetmeats and toys' meant that a new site was needed.[5] A retrospective report in the Exeter Flying Post in 1891 recalled how, prior to the move,
[t]he booth and shows stood two and three deep in the road, leaving barely enough room for a single vehicle to pass. Complaints of the inconvenience of this arrangement became so numerous that the scene of operations was transferred to the field opposite the parish church.[6]
By 1837 'Mr. HARRIS' OLD FAIR FIELD, opposite the Church' was an established site for the fair although the stall owners and showmen did not always keep to their new location. In 1847 the Western Times reported that the
booth people, mummers, &c., were somewhat harassed by a local magistrate, and the shows were very properly sent into the field opposite the church, instead of being allowed to remain in the highway, obstructing the thoroughfare and destroying the peace of the resident villagers.'[7]
But, in general, the main fair was still being held in Mr. Harris's old fair field nearly thirty years later in 1864 when the venue was changed once more.[8] According to a Post reporter, writing in 1891, the change of venue in the mid-1860s had occurred because 'the owner of the field' opposite the church 'found that the popular idea of amusement clashed with his religious convictions' and the 'showmen and stallkeepers therefore migrated to a field off the Alphington-road.'[9] In 1865, the Devon Weekly Times carried a report stating that 'Easter Fair this year was held in a field in Alphington-street, instead of in the usual place.'[10] And, when Wombwell's menagerie visited the fair in 1867, the Gazette noted that it would appear at the Fairground on Alphington Road in St. Thomas.[11] The site was more specifically given as the 'Field/adjourning the railway Arch, Alphington Road' in advertisement of 1869.[12] The Alphington Road site remained the home of the Easter Fair for a number of years, but in 1874 the Western Times commented that there had been a change of venue the previous year, to 'a field on the Okehampton-road' and in 1875, the same paper acknowledged 'the customary field near the Okehampton-street railway arch' as the now regular site for the Fair.[13] More specifically, in the 1876 report, the paper detailed the site as being the 'old rack Field', at the entrance to the old Okehampton Road.[14] In marked contrast to James Cossins's reminiscences of the old fair spilling into the streets and fields of St. Thomas, in 1878 the Post unromantically pointed out that the fair was 'held this year in a field at the back of the gas works.'[15] And in 1879, the site changed again, this time to 'a field near the St. Thomas Union'.[16] In 1881 the fair appeared to be back in its more usual site of a field in the Okehampton Road, where it remained until 1884. In the following year the fair was based again on Okehampton Street, in the 'large field near the St. Thomas Union Workhouse' although a visit by Bostock & Wombwell's Menagerie in 1885 meant that the St. Thomas Football Ground on the Okehampton Road had to be requisitioned as an additional site.[17] A Gazette reporter acknowledged the annoyance that the changes in sites had occasioned, suggesting that, as the
showmen have had to make many shifts first and last within the St. Thomas parish [...] from present appearances it seems pretty certain that they are drawing to the end of their tether, and will have to pitch their caravans elsewhere, for certainly by comparing the present with the past, the Fair as an annual "Institution" seems destined to become extinct.[18]
Whether the showmen would eventually stop attending the fair as a result of personal grievance or the perceived decline of the event - itself the result of regularly changed venues - is here unclear, but as the local newspapers carried nostalgic reports lamenting the modern fair and forecasting its decline throughout the whole of the nineteenth century, more weight should perhaps be given to the immediate complaints of the showmen over changing sites, than to any temporary drop in visitor numbers. A single site for the Fair on the Okehampton Road was maintained for the rest of the 1880s, and in 1889 buses transported visitors through Exeter, from the London Inn Square, down Fore Street to the destination of the 'Fairfield'.[19] The site remained unchanged into the 1890s, although a report in the Post in 1894 suggested that planned building work on the fair field might mark its closure.[20] The concern proved unfounded, but by 1895 the fair field had certainly been 'deprived of about two-thirds of its former dimensions' even though 'thousands' continued to visit the site.[21]
In 1900, the site was changed once more, this time to the Old Wrestling Ground, on Buller Road, where it remained into the early years of the twentieth century. Frank Retter, recalling his childhood in Exeter, around 1910, remembered that the fair field was 'close to Oakfield Road with an opening leading to Buller Road and another leading to Okehampton Street.'[22] And the former Mayor, Walter George Daw, born in 1905 noted that 'for many years it was held at St. Thomas on the site where the MontgomerySchool now stands.'[23]
Footnotes
[1] Maryanne Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 59
[2] Kowaleski, pp. 66, 68.
[3] 'St. Thomas or Easter Fair Fifty Years Since', in Exeter Flying Post (hereafter referred to as the Post) 14 March 1877, p. 7. See also the Western Times, 16 March 1877, p. 2, and Cossins Reminiscences, pp. 71-72.
[4] Woolmer's Exeter and Plymouth Gazette (hereafter referred to as the Gazette), 17 April 1830, p. [3].
[5] Gazette, 25 April 1835, p. [2].
[6] Post, 28 March 1891, p. 3.
[7] Western Times, 10 April 1847, p. 6
[8] Post, 17 February 1864, p. 8.
[9] Post, 28 March 1891, p. 3.
[10] Devon Weekly Times, 21 April 1865, p. 5.
[11] Gazette, 18 April 1867, p. 4.
[12] Gazette, 10 March 1869, p. 8.
[13] Western Times, 7 April 1874, p. 5, and 30 March 1875, p. 5.
[14] Western Times, 18 April, 1876, p. 3.
[15] Post, 24 April 1878, p. 5.
[16] Western Times, 15 April 1879, p. 5.
[17] Western Times, 7 April 1885, p. 5, and Post, 1 April 1885, p. 4.
[18] Western Times, 7 April 1885, p. 5.
[19] Western Times, 23 April 1889, p. 5.
[20] Post, 31 March 1894, p. 8.
[21] Gazette,16 April 1895, p. 8.
[22] 'St. Thomas Easter Fair', in Frank Retter, An Exeter Boyhood, p. 20. Unfortunately Retter doesn't give a year, but his recollections start at around 1906 and most from his boyhood seem to be between 1910 and 1913.
[23] Michael J. Williams (ed) Walter George Daw: Exeter Citizen (Exeter: 1994), p. 6.