Nottingham Goose Fair

[upbeat music]That was Nottingham Town by Fairpoint Convention.

Potentially a misspelling of Nottingham, it's an American folk song, but there are some schools of thought that think it derives from medieval English history, and it does reference a fair, which perhaps is a reference to Nottingham's Goose Fair.

This is a fair that has gone for, and still goes to this day, for 700 years in Nottingham.

Initially, it was a livestock fair, and the geese would waddle through Nottingham once a year in time for Michaelmas to be sold for the Feast of the Saints on the 29th of September.

Goose Fair will feature later in this story.

But for now, we're gonna go back 437 years, back to Calverton, to 1589.

And you must be asking the question, what does a reverend of the 1500s have to do with the progress of technology? Well, legend has it William was infatuated with a local lady, and this local lady was obsessed with knitting.

Now, obviously it is the 1800s that we are building up to, and if you haven't guessed it yet, the Luddite movement itself that happens in 1811.

Speaking of atmosphere, I was talking to Liv.

She went to Goose Fair.

Yes.

The local fair.

Famous fair.

Right, I was going to say,

just to give you a setting, Goose Fair's been going since 18...

I don't know how many hundred...

Well, we initially went to French France looking for turkey legs, and there were none, which was a disaster.

And then last week, we were at Goose Fair in Nottingham, and it's just occurred to me now, I should have released that video by now, which I haven't done.

So...

Remind me at the end of the podcast recording to release that video that I made while we were there.

I actually remember the boxing rink and all sorts of unusual sideshows.

And they had links with the Nottingham Goose Fair.

So some of the families would come all the way down from there.

and set up just for that one night, October the 6th.

But yeah, 6,600 people have gone home entertained.

And anyone who decided not to go to Goose Fair tonight, well, it was at the front of the fair was here, wasn't it, John? Certainly

was, yeah.

I mean, just picking up on what Chris said there, Danny said, he says, we have to clean things up.