Cloth Fair, ca.1877

From: A.& J. Bool

RA Collection: Art

"Cloth Fair, though it has undergone alterations in recent years, still preserves, far beyond any other portion of London, mediaeval characteristics. There are here narrow walled lanes, where two persons can pass one another with difficulty. In another lane the occupants of the houses could literally, and without danger or difficulty, shake hands from the windows on opposite sides of the way. The explorer may thread covered passages from which he can note details of domestic life passing within easy ken. That houses built so closely, and of such inflamable materials, should have survived to the present day seems little short of marvelous.

The object of the present series is not to give a record of the Church itself. The noble work of the interior, its massive Norman arches, grand proportions and magnificent tombs, could far better be rendered by the art of the etcher. Our aim - and may we in future numbers return to the subject, by no means exhausted in this set - has been to show the picturesque manner in which ecclesiastical and civil buildings are, as it were, dovetailed together in this quaintest nook of Old London.

Vast as the existing Church is, it is little more than one-third of the Priory founded in the twelfth century. At the dissolution of monasteries, so much of the Priory Church as had not been demolished was assigned as the Parish Church to the inhabitants of the great Close of St Batholomew.

Cloth Fair drives its name from the famous St Batholomew Fair, held within the precinct of the Priory. This was for several centuries the great cloth fair of England, "to the which," says Stow, "the clothiers of all England and drapers of London repaired, and had their booths and standings within the churchyard of this Priory, closed in with walls and gates, locked every night and watched, for safety of men's goods and wares....But now, notwithstanding all proclamations of the Prince, and also the Act of Parliament, in place of booths within this churchyard (only let out in fair time, and closed up all the year after), be many large houses built and the north wall towards Long Lane taken down, a number of tenements are there erected for such as will give great rents." (p.141.) Till within the last fifty years Cloth Fair was still chiefly occupied by tailors, clothiers, &c. (Allen's London, iii., 658.) The importance of Bartholomew Fair as a cloth fair fell off from the time of Elizabeth, but it continued to flourish as a "pleasure" fair, traces of which existed up to quite recent years.

(Photograph) "No.18 - The former view reversed".

[The former view was of the north side of the Church and the Poor's Churchyard.]

The above description, by Alfred Marks, was taken from the letterpress which accompanies the photographs. Public health concerns regarding the alley and its neighbourhood prompted the Corporation of London's sanitary scheme for the area, though, from 1914 to 1917, there was a considerable outcry when old houses backing on to the graveyard and around the Fair were demolished.