From the Castle Mound the Cam may be seen, winding away through the flats into the distant haze. Immediately below are Parker's Piece, and Midsummer and Stourbridge Commons; this last from time beyond knowledge the annual scene of Stourbridge Fair. "Sturbitch" Fair, as the country-folk call it, existed, like the University itself, before history came to take note of it. When King John reigned it was already an important mark, and so continued until, at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, its rights and privileges were transferred to the Corporation of Cambridge.
Whether the story of its origin be well founded, or merely a picturesque invention, it cannot be said. It is a story telling how a Kendal clothier, at date unknown, journeying from Westmoreland to London, his pack-horses laden with bales of cloth, found the bridge over the Cam at this point broken down, and, trying to ford the river, fell in, goods and all. Struggling at last to the opposite bank, and fishing out his property, he spread his cloth to dry on Stourbridge Common, where so many of the townsfolk came to see it and to bid that in the end he sold nearly all his stock, and did much better than if he had gone on to London. The next year, therefore, he took care—not to fall into the Cam again—but to make Cambridge his mart. Other trades then became attracted to the place where he found business so brisk, and hence (according to the legend) the growth of a fair in its prime comparable only with that greatest of all fairs—the famous one of Nijni-Novgorod.
To criticise a legend of this kind would be to take it too seriously, else, among many things that might be inquired into would be the appearance at Cambridge of a traveller from Westmoreland bound for London. He must have missed his way very widely indeed!
The Fair still lasts three weeks, from 18th September to 10th October, but it is the merest shadow of its former self. The Horse Fair, on the 25th September, is practically all that remains of serious business. In old times its annual opening was attended with much ceremony. In those days, before the computation of time was altered, and Old Style became changed for New, the dates of opening and closing were 7th and 29th September. On Saint Bartholomew's Day the Mayor and Corporation rode out from the town to set out the ground, then cultivated. By that day all crops had to be cleared, or the stall-holders, ready to set up their stalls and booths, were at liberty to trample them down. On the other hand, they were under obligation to remove everything by St. Michael's Day, or the ploughmen, ready by this time to break ground for ploughing, had the right to carry off any remaining goods. Stourbridge Fair was then a town of booths. In the centre was the Duddery, the street where the mercers, drapers and clothiers sold their wares; and running in different directions were Ironmongers' Row, Cooks' Row, Garlick Row, Booksellers' Row, and many another busy street. In those times the three weeks' turnover of the various trades was calculated at not less than a quarter of a million sterling. The railways that destroyed the position of Lynn, Ely, and Cambridge as distributing places along the Cam and Ouse, have wrought havoc with this old-time Fair.
XXVII
Through Chesterton, overlooked by the Castle and deriving its name from it, the road leaves Cambridge for Ely, passing through the village of Milton, where the Fenland begins, or what is more by usage than true description so-called now the Fens are drained and the land once sodden with water and covered with beds of dense reeds and rushes made to bear corn and to afford rich pasture for cattle. This is the true district of the "Cambridgeshire Camels," as the folk of the shire are proverbially called. The term, a very old one, doubtless took its origin in the methods of traversing the Fens formerly adopted by the rustic folk. They used stilts, or "stetches," as they preferred to call them, and no doubt afforded an amusing spectacle to strangers, as they straddled high above the reeds and stalked from one grassy tussock to another in the quaking bogs.
There is a choice of routes at Milton, the road running in a loop for two miles. The left-hand branch, through Landbeach, selected by the Post Office as the route of its telegraph-poles, might on that account be considered the main road, but the right-hand route has decidedly the better surface. Midway of this course, where the Slap Up Inn stands, is the lane leading to Waterbeach, a scattered village near the Cam, much troubled by the floods from that stream in days gone by.
Something of what Waterbeach was like in the eighteenth century may be gathered from the correspondence of the Rev. William Cole, curate there from 1767 to 1770. Twenty guineas a year was the modest sum he received, but that, fortunately for him, was not the full measure of his resources, for he possessed an estate in the neighbourhood. The value of his land could not have been great, and may be guessed from his letters. Writing in 1769, he says: "A great part of my estate has been drowned these two years: all this part of the country is now covered with water and the poor people of this parish utterly ruined." And again in 1770: "This is the third time within six years that my estate has been drowned, and now worse than ever." Shortly after writing that letter he removed. "Not being a water-rat," he says, "I left Waterbeach," and went to the higher and drier village of Milton, two miles away.
Waterbeach long retained its old-world manners and customs. May Day was its greatest holiday, and was ushered in with elaborate preparations. The young women collected materials for a garland, consisting of ribbons, flowers, and silver spoons, with a silver tankard to suspend in the centre; while the young men, early in the morning, or late at night, went forth into the fields to collect emblems of their esteem or disapproval of the young women aforesaid. "Then," says the old historian of these things, "woe betide the girl of loose habits, the slattern and the scold; for while the young woman who had been foremost in the dance, or whose amiable manners entitled her to esteem, had a large branch or tree of whitethorn planted by her cottage door, the girl of loose manners had a blackthorn at hers." The slattern's emblem was an elder tree, and the scold's a bunch of nettles tied to the latch of the door.