Clack’s fall fair was kept on Old Michaelmas Day, when farm lads stood about the Mop in clean smock frocks and maid servants waited in a corner to be hired. It was a fair for horses, pigs, cattle and sheep as well as servants, and in better years it had Joe Ody the conjuror in the Blindhouse, a learned dog, a fortune-telling pony and dancing bears. The Wiltshire correspondent found it much fallen off in 1826, with a few gingerbread booths, a blind fiddler and a gaming table.
Clack Fall Fair and the Mop
11 October · Clack, Bradenstoke, Wiltshire
No longer kept
a few rustics waited about the "Mop" or "Statue" in their clean frocks twisted round their waists with their best clothes on
From Hone's Every-Day Book, vol. 2, cols. 1371-1372. Read the original
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