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The East Anglian
Fairs
1972-1986
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In the early/mid 1960s London was a magnet
drawing the young and hip in from the regions, shaking off the austerity of the
1950s and riding the peak of British wealth.
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As the decade drew to a close some of those incomers,
and their London friends, left the city heading back
out into the shires, and the quieter, slower, life of
village and market town.
Some settled in North Suffolk and South Norfolk,
an open countryside of low hills and wide plains spotted with
marsh and cut by fen, of few
towns and many villages, with the River Waveney dividing one
county
from
the other.
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By 1971 a social network had developed in the Waveney area sufficiently large
for a public event to be planned, in the form of a medieval fair. This was the
1972 Barsham Faire. Four more followed
culminating in the Last Barsham Faire of 1976. The money raised by the fairs was
used to run a variety of events throughout the region, including music,
theatre, and childrens events, art shows and a travelling cinema.
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In 1976 the first Bungay May Horse Fair was also held, the revival of an
earlier tradition which had died out in the 1950s. In 1977 the second Bungay
May Horse Fair was held and an ad hoc group participated in the Eye Show. The
following winter some of the Barsham crew and friends set up Albion Fair, an
attempt to
take the fairs to the rest of the country - though financial limitations kept
them mainly within East Anglia.
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The next six summers were punctuated by weekends of creativity and spectacle,
as different groups and individuals organised their own fairs, supported by the
amorphous core group known as Albion Fairs.
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After 1983 the number of fairs dropped rapidly though smaller
local offshoots persisted and Barsham and Albions' influence continue to be
found in odd places today.
So hello visitor, especially to any of you who spent some time in one East
Anglian field or another -
keen site crew or simple fairgoer, mingling thespian, wandering troubadour,
there of your own free will or hauled along by parent or partner.
Welcome to this newly expanded East Anglian Fairs website.
Each fair for which we have scanned images now has its own page. We have
probably missed some of the later fairs, and the EAAT activities and other
smaller events have barely got a look in. Please help fill the gaps in the
chronology, and let us know if you have anything which can be
scanned/photographed and added to this site.
The 1986 cut off is not fixed, send us details of later events.
Email us here
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Raising the dome at Eye in 1978
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Visitors who have passed this point:
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The Coypu Liberation Army raising hell
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In memory of Mick Sparksman.
1943 - 1991
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The coypu is a large water rat of South American origin, which was once bred in
East Anglia for its underfur - nutria. Inevitably some escaped and established
their own, locally disruptive, place in the ecosystem. Throughout the time of
the fairs they were being officially hunted to local extinction.
Mick Sparksman dressed one up as Rupert Bear and drew its adventures in Coypu
Comix, a suitable symbol for another bunch of disruptive outsiders. Mick also
provided the artwork for the first years of the Waveney Clarion.
More Coypu Comix
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The East Anglian Fairs 1972-1986 © Fairs Archives 2005
The copyrights of the individual images or texts remain with the
creators.
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