For 363 days of the year the road known simply as St Giles’ is the very essence of urban decorum, its stately boulevardian approach to the North Gate of Oxford fronted by grand buildings, framed by dappled plane trees, punctuated by reverential statues, and book-ended by the ancient churches of St Giles and St Mary Magdalen.
On the other two days of the year, it is different. Very different.
The road is closed. Trucks rumble in. Generators begin to thrum. Up go the helter-skelters and swing boats. Round go the carousels and bumper cars. On go the razzle-dazzle lights. The music kicks in with a deep, pulsing thud …
The time has come: 48 hours of glorious mayhem.
Writing sixty years ago, Jan Morris described the scene:
It is the most boisterous of Oxford traditions … and it brings together in an atmosphere of unnatural intensity every type and kind of Oxford citizen.
The academics go with their burbling children, eating iced lollipops and arguing the toss with indulgent showmen. The factory families go, trailing balloons and sweet papers, and hugging flowery vases they have won at shooting galleries. The farmers go, stumping stoically through the hubbub with kind wives in blue hats. The parish clergy go, from a sense of boyish duty. The weedy louts go, to stand around in bow-legged moronic cliques, licking candy floss. And the shop-girls go, to let their skirts fly on the Big Dipper …
Flushed from their normal habitats, like this, thrown together between the Bingo stalls and the Man-Eating Rat, they always seem to me larger, finer, or more awful than life. St Giles’ Fair is like a city with its masks torn off, seen with a flushed or psychedelic clarity, and it makes you wonder how such contrasts can ever be reconciled. It is sure to end, you feel, like all the worse dreams, in a scream, a cold, sweat, or a blackout.
And then it’s over. For another year at least. St Giles’ falls silent once more. Emptied.
By Wednesday morning, all of the stalls and roundabouts have miraculously disappeared, and the scholars, the charge-hands, the oafs and the parsons are restored to their blurred and unalarming selves.
Did it ever really happen?
Stephen Foote (colour) and David Stumpp (b/w) have been attending St Giles’ Fair for more than a decade.
Our thanks for this glimpse of their prize-winning photographs.
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Like everything else in Oxford, St Giles’ Fair comes with its distinctive admixture of religious and civic ceremony. We are grateful, as ever, to David Hawkins, Town Hall Civic Lead and organiser supreme, for this overview of the formalities.
The Blessing:
The Lord Mayor will attend the fair blessing on Sunday 7th at 17:00. This ceremony marks the spiritual and communal beginning of the fair, one of the oldest and largest street fairs in England. The service is led by our City Rector, the Revd Anthony Buckley from St Michael at the North Gate, and includes clergy from local churches. A formal blessing is given for the fair, its workers, and attendees. The ceremony concludes with a Showmen’s Guild traditional hymn, ‘God Bless the Prince of Wales’.
Formal Opening:
The Lord Mayor will leave the Town Hall at 10:30 on Monday 8th in robes and chains to be met by the City Rector as we pass the City Church, for the opening that will take place at 11:00 with representatives of the Showmen’s Guild, normally on the dodgems. We try to stay close to the Martyrs’ Memorial. The Lord Mayor delivers a short speech to declare the fair officially open. A ceremonial bell is rung to mark the official start, after which the Lord Mayor and civic party walk around the fair, meeting showmen and sampling rides and attractions. We then retire to the City Church for a light lunch, and again to allow the Lord Mayor to personally thank the Showmen’s Guild for all their hard work, without having to shout over all the music and noise of the rides.
The history of the fair stretches back at least four centuries. Stephanie Jenkins writes about it here: https://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/stgiles/fair/index.html
Stephanie also draws our attention to the National Fairground and Circus Archive which contains approximately a thousand films and old photographs of St Giles’ Fair through the ages.
A priceless moment captured by the ever-watchful Duncan Taylor:
Chris Andrews sent in this spectacular offering:
For those who like their Fairs on a smaller scale (and like to get out of the September rain) Oxford affords a special treat. Model exhibitors gather in St Giles’ church for a display of their wares. It’s free and it’s fun. Our thanks to Martin Cooper and Simon Brazil for sending this photograph.
