Page 17 - MarketTimesDecember2018
P. 17

FEATURE • SHERBORNE PACK FAIR 17
Sherborne Pack Fair in Dorset is on the up again after a local events company took over its running this year. NSicola Gould joins the throngs who fill the town for this ancient event which dates back to medieval times
  herborne Pack Fair has been an annual The licence for the pack fair is held by the market with high rents, Brian says, but food tradition in this picturesque Dorset town Sherborne Castle Estates, which also runs the festivals and big events like Derby Day in
ever since the stonemasons and labourers weekly market, but in recent years the fair has Epsom are still well worth the effort.
“packed” up their tools after finishing work on waned, with the number of stalls reducing and Craig Halket, who has traded at fairs all over
Sherborne Abbey in 1490 and decided to celebrate.
feedback from visitors that there were now too many burger vans and not enough traditional stalls.
the country since his father, Bobby, took him when he was a young child, rang up on the Thursday before this year’s pack fair and got a pitch.
Tradition has it they staged a fair in the churchyard, blowing cow horns and rejoicing at the completion of a job well done.
Brian Billington, who has traded on every pack fair since he began market trading in 1966, said: “It used to be a huge event and as a trader you could bring anything to the pack fair and it would sell out.”
That would have been unheard of in years gone by.
The pack fair became a huge annual tradition, taking over the town on the first Monday after Michaelmas.
The town centre still closes to traffic and big crowds fill the streets all day and late into the evening.
Craig soon had queues of punters buying the tweed bags and purses he sells. “The pack fair has changed and it’s the traders that make the difference. There are fewer of the professional fairs traders,” he added.
Originally an agricultural fair, it developed into a general fair with market stalls filling the streets, and also included entertainment, sideshows and a funfair.
“But these days they come for the event and don’t spend in the way they did in the old days,” said Brian, who sells home furnishings.
But there are still young traders doing well. The Catley brothers, who had two vehicles at the recent pack fair selling cheese and bacon, are a shining example of the best of professional market trading.
Many ancient traditions have been maintained. Back in the 19th century the start of the fair was heralded by children blowing cow horns after the clock struck midnight.
Now that he is 70 Brian, one of the NMTF Fairs Group liaison officers, is not so worried about the drop in takings, but he says some of the traditional fairs traders have given up and there’s no great incentive for new traders to join the fairs circuit.
There are five brothers in the business — Taran, 30, Dan, 29, Aaron,27, Troy, 25, and Michael, 22.
Now it is launched by Teddy Roe’s Band, a band of youths who march through the town and make a lot of noise with cans, horns and whistles in memory of Teddy Roe, the foreman who helped build the abbey.
Agricultural shows have priced traders out of
Their dad, Ralph, who sells menswear on markets, introduced them to trading from
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