Pack Monday Fair is an annual street fair held in the country town of

Sherborne Sherborne is a market town and civil parish in north west Dorset, in South West England. It is sited on the River Yeo, on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, east of Yeovil. The parish includes the hamlets of Nether Coombe and Lower Clatcombe. T ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...

, starting on the Monday following 10 October (

Old Michaelmas Day Michaelmas ( ; also known as the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels) is a Christian festival observed in some Western liturgical calendars on 29 September, ...

). Originally an agricultural fair, it is now devoted to stalls, sideshows and a funfair.

Origins

The origins of the fair are unknown, though it must be of some antiquity as John Hutchins in the second edition of his ''History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset'' (1815) states that it has been an "immemorial custom", for boys and young men to blow horns in the evenings in the streets for some weeks before the fair "to the no small annoyance of their less wakeful neighbours". The fair was ushered in by cows' horns and by the ringing of the great bell at a very early hour of the morning. It was a great holiday for the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood. According to one local tradition, set out in

William Hone William Hone (3 June 1780 – 8 November 1842) was an English writer, satirist and bookseller. His victorious court battle against government censorship in 1817 marked a turning point in the fight for British press freedom. Biography Hon ...

’s ''Every Day Book'' of 1826, the fair and its noisy announcement originated at the completion of the building of

Sherborne Abbey Sherborne Abbey, otherwise the Abbey Church of St. Mary the Virgin, is a Church of England church in Sherborne in the English county of Dorset. It has been a Saxon cathedral (705–1075), a Benedictine abbey church (998–1539), and since 1539, ...

when the workmen ‘packed up’ their tools and “held a fair or wake, in the churchyard, blowing cows' horns in their rejoicing”. The folklorist

Steve Roud Steve Roud (; born 1949) is the creator of the Roud Folk Song Index and an expert on folklore and superstition. He was formerly Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society. Life and c ...

in his 2006 book ''The English Year'' suggests that the word ‘pack’ in the title of the fair is in fact more likely to refer to the day on which workers packed up their belongings to move house at the end of the annual term of employment,

being one of the most common days for the annual move. Alternatively, ‘pack’ may relate to itinerant sellers and their wares (as in ‘pack-man’ or ‘

packhorse A packhorse, pack horse, or sumpter refers to a horse, mule, donkey, or pony used to carry goods on its back, usually in sidebags or panniers. Typically packhorses are used to cross difficult terrain, where the absence of roads prevents the use of ...

’). The theory that ‘pack’ is a dialect term for the ‘pacts’ made between farmers and workers at the fair he considers unlikely as that usage is not known locally.

18th- and 19th-Century fair

A diary entry written by Richard Bellamy, a local solicitor's

articled clerk Articled clerk is a title used in Commonwealth countries for one who is studying to be an accountant or a lawyer. In doing so, they are put under the supervision of someone already in the profession, now usually for two years, but previously thre ...

, describes an evening performance at the town's Swan Inn during the fair of 1794: An extensive description of the fair in the early 19th century, when the whole town was taken over by the event, appears in

's ''Every Day Book'' of 1826. The fair is described as The book is a compilation of articles originally published weekly from January 1825 to December 1826.

Teddy Roe's Band

The custom of announcing the fair with

rough music Charivari (, , , alternatively spelled shivaree or chivaree and also called a skimmington) was a European and North American folk custom in which a mock parade was staged through a community accompanied by a discordant mock serenade. Since the cr ...

continues to the present day. Teddy Roe's (or Rowe's) Band, as it is now known, is made up of the youth of the town and makes a great deal of noise with tin cans, horns and whistles. Teddy Roe is by tradition supposed to be the foreman of the masons who were working on the fan vault of

in 1490. They were given a day off to visit the fair, packed up their tools, and marched in joyful procession to the fairground. Roud states, however, that this story is without foundation, and that the heralding of fairs with noisy processions of this type is known from many other examples up and down the country. Teddy Roe's band was suppressed in the 1960s, because of the potential for rowdyism it offered, but the tradition re-emerged.

References

{{Reflist, 30em October observances Dorset folklore Fairs in England Sherborne