Time Lapse of Chaos Fairground Ride at Stratford Mop Fair 2008

Farm workers, labourers, servants and some craftsmen would work for their employer from October to October. At the end of the employment they would attend the Mop Fair dressed in their Sunday best clothes and carrying an item signifying their trade. A servant with no particular skills would carry a mop head hence the phrase Mop Fair.

Employers would move amongst them discussing experience and terms, once agreement was reached the employer would give the employee a small token of money and the employee would remove the item signifying their trade and wear bright ribbons to indicate they had been hired. They would then spend the token amongst the stalls set-up at the fair which would be selling food and drink and offering games to play.

Michaelmas Day is celebrated on the 29th September but Mop Fairs were tied to the seasons and the harvest, not the calendar. When the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1752 and 11 days dropped from that year events associated with the end of the harvest moved 11 days later to the 10th October. This date is known as "Old Michaelmas Day" and since 1752 has been the date Mop Fairs take place.

Mops are still held in some English towns, though many have died out. To confuse matters some fairs have adopted the term Mop even though they are not held on or near to Michaelmas Day or they are a recent creation.
Mops usually last for 2 days and take over the centre of the town, and in recent times the Mops have become little more than a funfair.

Stratford-on-Avon Mop Fair has its origins in hiring agricultural and domestic labour, set out some time during the reign of Edward III and provision of the statutes of labourers. The date is set for 12th October (or is moved if the 12th October falls on a Sunday), and as a pleasure fair it remains a key date in the Warwickshire calendar. In the 1950s, during the prominence of railway travel, a plethora of special trains were laid on to ferry the local population to and from the fair.

Stratford Mop has an associated 'runaway mop' one week later. The tradition of this is from the need for employers to reconsider and re-hire any staff before committing to a full years work.

This street fair has a tradition of exciting and up-to-date riding machines, as well as maintaining loyal old-fashioned rides. The fair is also renowned for the open roasting of pigs and oxen, and the atmosphere remains at a premium right up until its midnight closure.

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