Tag Archives: Sydney Race

Victorian Goose Fair

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Nottingham Goose Fair, Market Place, 1890s
Credit: The Paul Nix Collection

The Goose Fair has been a prominent fixture in the local calendar for as far back as 1160, with only an outbreak of leprosy in 1346, the bubonic plague of 1646, and the great Wars of the 20th century bringing it to a temporary close. So there’s a fair bit of history surrounding this annual festival. However, it is a book reference that is the latest cause of celebration for Nottingham’s not-best kept secret as this is where a randy factory worker called Arthur Seaton received a good kicking from two Swaddies for having his end away with a married woman and her sister on a certain Saturday night in 1958.

Is that a snake woman or are you just pleased to see me? Source Sillitoe Trail.

To celebrate this important location (rather than adultery or violence) the Alan Sillitoe Committee has commissioned local historian and author Ann Featherstone to give a talk about the history of the fair. Ann will be sharing her love of the Victorian period when the fair included freak shows and menageries, performing seals and diving shows, fat ladies and skeleton men. The Balloon Headed Baby, Mary Anne Bevan the World’s Ugliest Woman and Leonine the Lion Faced Lady are just some of the acts managed by Tom ‘The Silver King’ Norman, the man who commissioned the silver bells that are still used today as part of the Lord Mayor’s ‘ringing in’ ceremony. Sadly these oddities are long gone from the fair but if you switch on C4 at 9pm any night in the week then you’ll find they’ve found a new home.

Sydney Race’s secret diary. Photo Ann Featherstone.

Ann’s talk will draw upon the diaries of Sydney Race, an obscure diarist who, writing in the 1890s, documented the last live shows of the Fair before it transformed into the gleaming chav magnet that we know and love today. One regular feature of the Fair then was the animal shows (and we don’t mean the GB Lions they failed to flog at the Olympics that you’ll be able to win on hook a duck). We’re talking proper animals: hyenas, wolves, and bears, all abused and mistreated for the pleasure of the paying public. The exhibition of animals was seen as both entertaining and educational. Perhaps the most bizarre act to feature an animal was the Globe of Death (or Wall of Death) where it was quite common for a lion to be taken on the wall in a side car.

The Victorian Goose Fair was a bizarre, horrific and tragic experience, which explains why people loved it so much. Ann will be recounting some of these tales and illustrating her talk with visuals. She will be open to questions as well as encouraging the audience to share their own memories. If you are interested in local history, human oddities and want to escape the current Fair for five minutes, then cross the road from the Forest Recreation Ground and join us in the New Art Exchange. They do some pretty nice nosh in there as well, should you crave more than cocks on sticks and mushy peas.

‘Victorian Goose Fair’ by Ann Featherstone New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham, NG7 6BE Nae.org FREE 4.30 – 5.30 Saturday 6 October

The Goose Fair is the fifth location on the Sillitoe Trail Mobile Phone App which will be launched on 27 October at Sillitoe Day. 

To get you in Goose Fair mood I am currently tweeting Sillitoe’s short story ‘Noah’s Ark’ about two boys on a limited budget out for a bit of fun. A lot of the tweets include photos of the Goose Fair that go back to the Victorian age.
I’ve also written about the history of the Goose Fair for Colin Haynes’ quirky Nottingham Essence  

 

LeftLion 43

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It’s the last Friday of the month which can only mean one thing, LeftLion 43– the culmination of endless hours hard graft to ensure readers have something to spill their beer on in the pub. With it being Goose Fair month, there’s a general theme of carnivalesque behaviour. Ann Featherstone  (The Newgate Jig) was commissioned to write a piece on Victorian Notts through the observations of Sydney Race. Originally this was going to be on the WriteLion page but it was such a fantastic piece, we shifted it elsewhere. Deborah Tyler-Bennett kindly allowed us to reproduce three of her Goose Fair Poems which we were able to get illustrated, reinforcing the importance of planning months in advance and getting the copy in early. Given the general theme of debauchery and the recent riots, we featured three Crime Express novellas in our reviews section and we even found time to interview Danuta Reah, Ray Banks and Charlie Williams online to give readers a little more context.

Niki Monaghan wrote us a short story called The Bothy, to tie in with the release of her new book The Haunted, the first penned under her married name of Valentine. This is always a great way to promote a new book and something that will hopefully become more frequent now we’re at 48 pages.  With two literature articles commissioned, I was able to concentrate on a double page community piece with the Lambhorse Cabaret who are the most entertaining live act I’ve seen in yonks. They’re a weird collective of circus performers, poets, musicians, flame throwers, burlesque dancers and good old fashioned anarchists, the dark underbelly of the city that makes it come alive and pulsate. They’ll be performing at our Gunpowder, Treason and Pot event at the Nottingham Contemporary on November 4th. See, nothing’s left to chance.

We’re also proud to introduce a new feature called the Mither Squad, enabling the Thompson Brothers to continue their journey into local notoriety through an advice column. If you’re not the type to share your most embarrassing intimate secrets with a greengrocer, fear not. Al Needham and former escort-turned-author Rebecca Dakin are on hand as well. Oh yeah, and the Fish Man.

Other brief news to mention; I’ve done an interview with Deborah Stevenson of Mouthy Poets for the October issue of Writers’ Magazine; our next Shindig! at the Jam Cafe will be our last – so no excuses for not coming down; and finally, check out the Council House in Market Square mid-October. There’ll be two banners bearing the name of a certain magazine. Now enjoy the sun and get down the pub and pick up a copy of you know what.