From humble beginnings, Stourbridge Fair became a huge event every September for the next 700 years. The Charter for the Fair was granted in 1211 by King John of Magna Carta fame, designed as a fund-raiser to support the sick and elderly, especially those looked after at the local Leper Hospital. The fair continued even after the Leper numbers declined and the last inmates moved to Ely. Then the Chapel for the Leper Hospital was converted to be a store-house for the Fair stalls and booths and was also used as the pub for the Fair workers too. It is the only building related to the Fair that you can see today!

In its hey day Stourbridge Fair was the largest medieval fair in England and possibly across the whole world. It drew traders from all over Europe to the banks of the RiverCam.

The River was a vital route and most of the wares and the traders came to Stourbridge Fair by boat – with those from London and from overseas coming via King’s Lynn. The fair was therefore an important trading event, where local people purchased pots and pans, clothes and textiles, baskets and mats, horses and horseshoes, pitch and tar, coal and charcoal, iron and timber, books and musical instruments.
There are also records of book auctions at the Fair, and whole libraries were often sold this way, so that a street of the Fair was renamed ‘Booksellers Row’. In his notebooks, the famous Cambridge scientist of the late 1600s Isaac Newton describes visiting the booksellers and buying books on astronomy and also prisms which he calls ‘prisons’.

Prisms are made of glass & refract light, so Newton used these for some of his groundbreaking experiments. I’ve written a poem about Newton and the Fair (which you can watch as a film on the website), called ‘As I Was Going to Stourbridge Fair - Newton, Apple Pie, Prisms or Prisons…’.
There were also many entertainments on offer, including toy stalls and puppet shows, musical and theatrical booths. Stourbridge Fair had something for everyone!
Garlic Row and Mercer Row were the poshest thoroughfares and these names are still there on the street signs today! They were the main rows for the smarter booths and where the organizers would set out marker stones each year in the fields showing where the stalls would stand.

On Garlic row you had booths selling fine china and glass, silks and fine wool cloth, and haberdashery which included thread, lacy collars, and all the things you needed for making your own clothes, (which was what people did in the era before ‘off the peg’ clothes shops). The fancier stall holders on Mercer Row were selling fabrics and woollen suits and hats for the richer people and often had changing rooms at the back of the booth which were used as bedrooms at night.
You could also buy live animals and dead parts of animals as well! Horses were sold by the travellers and this is possibly how we get the name of ‘Stourbridge’ - ‘Stour’ being a word for horse, and ‘bridge’ because the Fair was near the bridge over Coldham’s Brook.

Raw wool and leather skins were also important items at the Fair - these were brought in from farms by horse-drawn wagons, so other traders and householders could buy wool to spin, and leather to make into shoes and belts and jackets; the wagons were then used as cover to sleep under at night, as the stall holders mostly slept over at the fair all the days they paid their rent for their pitch. Accounts showing they often stayed for a good two weeks when the Fair was busy from mid to late September.

Residents and visitors also came just to enjoy themselves - especially to eat and drink huge quantities of fish and bread, wine and ale. There is still a street to this day called ‘Oyster Row’ marking the site for the oyster sellers at the fair.

“Oysters with bread” was “fish and chips” for people in the past and Stourbridge Fair was so famous for its oyster sellers that the fair opened with the Mayor and University officials celebrating with an Oyster Feast. At the end of the Fair, there were such large piles of oyster shells everywhere that the farmers had to plough them back into the fields. Even today you can find discarded oyster shells - especially by the playground on the edge of Stourbridge Common – coming back up to the surface!

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