Higher up, and about fifty yards from the road was Ironmongers’ row, with booths occupied by manufactures from Sheffield, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and other parts; and dealers in agricultural tools, nails, hatchets, saws, and such like implements. About twenty yards nearer the road were woollen drapers; and further on, and opposite to Garlick-row westward, were booths for slop sellers, and dealers in haubergs, or waggoners’ frocks, jackets, half-boots, and such like habiliments for robust ploughmen and farm labourers. Then followed the hatters’ row, close to which was a very respectable coffee-house and tavern, fitted up with neat tables covered with green baize, having glazed sash-windows and a boarded floor, kept by the proprietor of Dochrell’s coffee-house in Cambridge, famed for excellent milk punch. There were also a number of suttling booths where plain and substantial dinners were served up in a neat comfortable style, well cooked and moderately charged, “except on the horse fair and Michaelmas days, when an extra sixpence was generally tackt to the tail of the goose.”
Shoemaker row was at the end of Garlick-row and consisted of ten or twelve booths. The basket fair, Tunbridge ware fair, and broom fair, were behind nearly at the top. In the basket fair were to be had all kinds of hampers, baskets and basket work; hay rakes, scythe-hafts, pitchfork and spade-handles, and other implements of husbandry, waggon loads of which were piled up there. In the Tunbridge ware section were malt, shovels, churns, cheese-presses and other wooden ware.
The circuit of the fair at the period to which this account relates was estimated at three miles. A list of many of the principal London dealers who attended this fair is appended to this account. Vide Hone’s “Year Book,” 1841 ed. col. 1539-48. A rough plan or chart of the fair is there given.
1828. The formal opening of the fair is described in Wall-Gunning, “The ceremonies observed in the senate-house of the University of Cambridge.” Camb. pp. 129-31.
1842. The practice—the origin of which I have not been able to trace—of the Proctors of the University giving entertainments at the Midsummer and Sturbridge fairs was this year discontinued by a Grace passed 2nd July.
1855. The University, for the last time, “called the fair” on 18th Sept. this year. The following form was used on the occasion—very much modified from that of 1548.
Proclamation of the Fair, by the University.—Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons are desired to keep silence while Proclamation of this Fair is being made.
His Royal Highness Prince Albert, Chancellor of this University Doth in the name of our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria strictly charge and command:
That all persons who shall repair to this Fair or the precincts thereof Do keep Her Majesty’s peace, and make no affrays or outcries whereby any gathering together of people be made, nor that they wear any weapons upon pain of imprisonment and loss of their weapons and further correction as shall be thought fit by the Officers of the said University.