CAMBRIDGE CURIOSITIES BEYOND THE LEPER CHAPEL S tourbridge Common – a large open meadow bordering the Cam, north-east of Cambridge – has a fascinating history. Walk past the times, when Stourbridge (variously known as Steresbrigge, Sturbridge or Stirbitch) became one of the largest fairs in Europe, attracting tradesmen and travellers from the serious business of buying and selling, fortunes made and frittered away. Legend has it that Isaac Newton acquired his light-splitting prisms at The Stourbridge Fair was once the talk of Europe. Jenny Swarbrick explores its history
Stourbridge, and Lord Byron his pet bear, which he kept at Trinity College. How many other unrecorded lives played out their dramas here? Lives begun and ended; a fumble in the shadows, a drunken stumble into the river, secrets shared, laughter and tittle-tattle exchanged. After its medieval heyday, Stourbridge Fair continued in one form or another until 1933. There are few tangible reminders nowadays, other than a handful of street names – Garlic Row, Oyster Row and Mercers Row – and a small annual re- enactment in the precinct of the Leper Chapel. But let your mind drift and it’s easy to imagine the thrill and clamour of one of Cambridge’s oldest fairgrounds. Join the Easter Service at the Leper Chapel on 20 April, led by the Church of Christ the Redeemer’s vicar. See ctrbarnwell.org
all over the country. It is said to be the inspiration for Bunyan’s Vanity Fair . Cloth, coal and spices Barges laden with cloth and coal, pottery and timber would have been unloaded at busy wharves along the river, while labourers constructed rows of wooden booths for merchants to live in and sell a vast array of goods – aromatic spices and salt, glass and pewter, silks and velvets for the rich, coarse hemp cloth for the poor. The air would have been filled with the stink of fish, meat and manure, along with rich and acrid woodsmoke and the fruitiness of hops, for which a large market area was set aside. There were taverns and eating houses, prostitutes and peep shows. All manner of colourful and exotic entertainments and trinkets tempted fairgoers to part with a few coins, alongside
Leper Chapel, along Oyster Row and over the cattle grid onto the common to be greeted by a wide, green flood plain. Head down the tree-lined paths towards the river and mingle with cyclists and rowers. Here, willows trail their branches into the water and houseboats bob snugly. Swans swoop into a water-ski landing, while grey herons supervise the to and fro of river life. This large green space was the setting – over hundreds of years – for the Stourbridge Fair, which first opened in 1211 by permission of King John, and allowed the friars of St Mary Magdalene to raise funds for the support of the Leper Hospital and Chapel. The fair, taking place for a month or so at the end of summer, grew in size and notoriety until medieval
A FAIR FIELD An annual re-enactment at the Leper Chapel brings Stourbridge Fair back to life
CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK APRIL 2025 41
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