Kendal Fair: Roger Bingham surveys one of South Lakeland's longest living links with the past.

'WILL the fair continue?' was asked during the controversy over the closure, in September, of Kendal's New Road car park.

The area, which until recently was never called a 'common', had been the site of the regular fun fair since it decamped in about 1850 from boggy Gooseholme to the waste land between the New Road, constructed in about 1819, and the River Kent.

To be fair, the Fairs survival had not been threatened, officially - because it couldn't be.

Fairs, along with markets, are a provable link with the Middle Ages.

Markets came first. On December 9, 1189, Roger Fitzreinfred granted a market on Saturday at Kyrkibi in Kentdale.

Markets existed for the exchange of local goods.

Commercially, Fairs were larger, and attracted more specific clientele from wider areas.

Founded in 1334 Milnthorpe had Cattle Fair. But Kendal's Fair, like 35 others in Cumbria, dated from the 14th century boom in the wool trade.

Its Fair Charter, granted by Edward II in 1310, was subsequently renewed by successive monarchs.

Its rules were among the first entries when The Kendal Boke of Recorde was compiled in 1575.

In 1694 the town held two Fairs yearly on April 25, St Mark's Day, and on October 29, the festival of St Simon and St Jude.

Like the market stalls the Fair's trading activities spread all over town.

During the 1800s the commercial aspects faded, though agricultural hirings at the fairs, continued into the 20th century.

In 1933 no one stopped the fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley recruiting farm labourers at the Spring Fair; nor was his chauffeur challenged for parking the aristocrat's Rolls Royce in the area.

Gradually all the fun of the Fair was restricted to a specific area. A water colour in Kendal's Mayors Parlour shows roundabouts on Gooseholme about 1820.

On New Road, in 1839, visitor attractions included 'a walk through the inside of a great whale'.

When in 1869, a fine tiger died of pneumonia, Fair goers paid to see its carcase as a rare opportunity to being in a the death of a tiger.

In 1872 New Road, according to The Westmorland Gazette 'was thronged with show booths, exhibitions of fat giantesses and other monstrosities, shooting galleries, merry go rounds and photographic studios'.

Excitingly, in about 1910 a sea lion escaped from an aquarium into the Kent and made off downstream towards Levens Park. Fearing for Levens Hall's salmon, Lady Bagot, assisted by the Vicar of Levens, the Rev Swan, commandeered a boat and caught the fugitive in the sluice at Sedgwick Gunpowder Works.

Later, after the death of Sir Joscelyn Bagot, her Ladyship 'hooked' the vicar as her second husband. History does not record whether the exciting affair at Kendal Fair contributed to their attachment.