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News
October 2008
The last year has seen several developments. Last November a
bunch of us met and put together the start of the Fairs Archive:
posters, handouts, minutes of meetings,assorted ephemera and an
incomlete set of the Waveney Clarion. More items have been added since,
and very soon the whole lot will be handed over to the care of the
County Record Office at Lowesoft Library. In September we had a small
exhibition at the Waveney Greenpeace Fair. This was much appreciated by
all who popped in during the day and we are now working on a bigger and
better exhibition to be toured round the region next year.
A new version of the website is being worked on and as an interim measure, to allow better communication a Wordpress blog has been created.
The site has also been given a new home, a proper address and a new email address - fairsarchive@googlemail.com
October 2007
Another page of photos added - from East Bergholt and Rougham 1980 (we think), courtesy of Madeline Lees. Can you identify any of the people?
February 2006
The Lowestoft branch of the Suffolk County Records Office is keen to
give a home to a fairs archive. A gathering point is being arranged to
take in the material which will form the archive. Contact us if you have anything to contribute.
And here's a couple more galleries of photos, courtesy of the mysterious Martin H.
To give you a taste of things to come here's some roughs - 'digital contact sheets'. Martin is working his way through them producing quality versions.
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Here's a list of the summer fairs, faires and fayres,
year by year. Then associated items: the winter events, the community
paper, the books generated by the fairs and writings from them.
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New - Nov 2005 -
Photo gallery
Poster gallery
1972.
Barsham Faire - Roos Hall, Beccles
1973.
Barsham Faire - Rectory Paddock, Barsham
1974.
Barsham Faire - Rectory Paddock, Barsham
1975.
Barsham Faire - Rectory Paddock, Barsham
1976.
Bungay May Fair - Mettingham Castle, Bungay
Barsham Faire - Rectory Paddock, Barsham
1977.
Jubilee Bungay May Fair - Mettingham Castle, Bungay
The Dome at the Eye Show
The Coypu Show
Albion Fairs formed
1978.
Albion Fair at Oaksmere
Downham Market
Blundeston
Wildream Fair - Bramfield
Mistletoe Fair - Thornham Magna
Rougham Tree Fair
Dragon Hill - Eye
The Warp at the ICA
1979.
Albion Fair at Oaksmere
Fantasy Fair - Lyng
Fire Fair - East Bergholt
Rougham Tree Fair
Dome put up at Glastonbury, Coypu Liberation Army to Hood Fair
1980.
Ariel Fair - Herringfleet Heights
Sun Fair - Lyng
Moon Fair - East Bergholt
Rougham Tree Fair
Follye Fayre - Heveningham
1981.
Albion Fair - Oaksmere
Green Fair - Blythburgh
Faerie Fair - Lyng
Rainbow Fair - East Bergholt
Alby Fair
Follye Fayre - Heveningham
Rougham Harvest Fair
1982.
Green Fair - Outney Commmon, Bungay
Albion Kids Fair - Oaksmere
Faerie Fair - Lyng
Pure Energy Fair - Westleton
Earth Fair - East Bergholt
Fire & Water Fair - Bayfield Nr Holt
Rougham Tree Fair
Follye Fayre - Heveningham
I think Wagtail Fair at Narbeth was
this year
1983
Thornham Magna.
Castle Fair - New Buckenham
1984
Green Deserts fair - Thorpe Woodlands, Thetford Forest
(There was another one day fair near Thetford - that was 1985 or 6 or maybe
even
later! Again likely Green Deserts.)
1985
Wool Fair - Stowmarket 15th and 16th June
1986
Great Desert Fair - Roos Hall, Barsham
Autumn until Spring
Village and town halls rather than fields
The Waveney Clarion
the community paper started with some of the profits of the first Barsham
Coypu Comix
Build Another Barsham
The Sun in the East
A reading list
on festivals
Website updates
Links
Guestbook
- what's been written
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'Fairs are people, pleasure and spectacle combined. They are the oldest,
liveliest and most unaffected form of public entertainment....
From earliest times merchants and strolling players foregathered at prescribed
trading fairs throughout the world. Although more often held in towns and
villages, these fairs were sometimes set up in bleak, inhospitable places like
the hilltop intersections of ancient trackways or, in enactment of pagan rites,
on remote burial grounds. The strange converging of huddles of carts and vans,
the wretched animals employed to draw them and the parasitic bands of cheap
jacks and mountebanks gave little indication of the brightness spontaneity, wit
and pathos, about to burst upon the scene.'
(David Braithwaite, `Travelling Fairs' - Shire Publications.)
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DRAGON HILL
Morning breaking it is
making nonsense
of all the meanness on earth.
Most dawns don't come
yellow like that
and the flints in the tower of Eye church
blazed back at the sky.
Around a campfire that had burned all night
we sat, the ashblond girl with the wailing child
with eczema, the strange boy from Cambridge
me and the tea-pot -
shoulder to shoulder and smokey-eyed we were
like desperadoes, cornered
some longago morning.
AB
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