Fairs

Tug of War team, Blaby, date unknown. Courtesy of the Records Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Mrs Everitt: Village fairs were the thing. We had a holiday for the village fair and we used to go to the, Whetstone always had a good fair and we used to go there. Grown ups used to go there and see the children at the fair, and if you were lucky you got a penny, you know, and if you looked pleading you might get another. Everybody went to the fairs. In fact at Whetstone, the next village, they had a penny a week at the butcher’s to buy a nice big piece of beef, and they also made what they called wake cake and wake wine. It was the, always the birthday of the church, the wake Sunday and then the wakes week, and that was a very exciting time for both adults and children.

Interviewer: What time of year was that?

Mrs Everitt: Well it depended on the birthday of the church. Ours was All Saints, and that was the first week in November, and I believe Whetsone was October, fairly on, ‘cos as I remember it was always dark and the field was muddy and they had flares on the stalls, like torches, going, and the stalls would be lit up. Gosh they were looked forward to, you know, all the year round. Other villages all around, you never went to them because you couldn’t get far, but you’d hear about their fairs and so forth. Wakes they were called.

Interviewer: What sorts of stalls were there?

Mrs Everitt: Oh well, the most exciting one was the gingerbread stall. They made in a round coil, like that, and it was a penny a coil, but you didn’t know if you could spend what little you had on that because you wanted to spend it on the horse, the carousel, you know, the horses, and so forth. But if you were lucky enough you could have some gingerbread. There was the usual darts stalls that they’ve got now, and I think they threw balls into a bucket, they were all simple games. It used to seem to me to go quite a way up, but there was only one thing and that was the roundabouts, it was later on that they got to have all the other wonderful things, you know.

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