All posts in the topic Oxford prepares for St. Giles Fair. (Short link)
Summary
- There are 8 posts — by 4 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Tony Joyce at Sep 08 09:50 UTC
Oxford prepares for St. Giles Fair.For details see www.oxfordprospect.co.uk
Oxford prepares for St. Giles Fair.
For details see www.oxfordprospect.co.uk
The question is - do we still need this historic event?
Is this event being held at the right time of year?
Would it not be better during the school holidays?
Your page is impossible to read: it seems to have white text on a white background. But there is information here on the city council website: http://www.oxford.gov.uk/news/news.cfm/current/1/item/2952 We certainly don't _need_ this historic event, and I wouldn't want to go to it myself, but it would be a shame if it disappeared. It's good to see the traffic stopped just once a year. And it would be better if it was held in the school holidays, with an easier way of remembering the date. The current formula of "the Monday and Tuesday following the first Sunday after St Giles' Day " is very hard to cope with even if you know that St Giles' Day is 1 September. It means that when 1 September is a Saturday, the fair is held at the earliest possible time (3 & 4 September); but when 1 September is a Sunday, the fair is held at the latest possible time (9 & 10 September).
Just tried your site in Internet Explorer, and it works there. But you need to
do something, because the only way you can read it in Firefox is to "View
Source", and an awful lot of people use Firefox now.
Sorry for this boring second message: to make amends, I will paste Jan (then
James) Morris's comments on the Fair in 1965:
The annual junket called St Giles' Fair… is an inexorable sort of festivity —
in September 1914 they tried to cancel it, but the Home Secretary himself
admitted that he was powerless to do so. The whole wide street of St Giles is
closed for it. For these two days of the year the University Parks and Christ
Church meadows, the two main open spaces of the city, are closed to the public.
Traffic is diverted, business is disrupted, the night is gaudy with neon, and
all among the plane trees there proliferate the side shows, caravans and
pulsing generators of the showmen.
It is the most boisterous of Oxford traditions, the profits of which go partly
to the city and partly to the college of St John's, the local landowner; 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 in piping cultured
accents. 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
aldermen go — in 1950 Alderman Smewin officially complained to the City Council
that there had been only one set of Galloping Horses to ride on. The parish
clergy go, from a sense of boyish duty, and 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. Every degree is represented there, from
the exquisite patrician to the grubbiest slut in carpet slippers: and 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. George's Café feels genially blended: but St Giles's Fair is like a city
with its masks torn off, seen with a flushed clarity, and it makes you wonder
how such contrasts can ever be reconciled. It is sure to end, you feel, like
all the worst dreams, in a scream, a cold sweat or a blackout.
Oxford, however, is old, and experienced at the game. By Wednesday morning all
those 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.
Why would it be a shame if it disappeared? I reckon it is a complete anachronism and an absolute curse to any one wanting to live, work or travel through the northern part of the city centre. Has it any positive value? Tony On 4/9/08 11:30, "Stephanie Jenkins" <stephanie.jenkins@gmail.com> wrote: > Your page is impossible to read: it seems to have white text on a white > background. But there is information here on the city council website: > http://www.oxford.gov.uk/news/news.cfm/current/1/item/2952 > > We certainly don't _need_ this historic event, and I wouldn't want to go to it > myself, but it would be a shame if it disappeared. It's good to see the > traffic stopped just once a year. > > And it would be better if it was held in the school holidays, with an easier > way of remembering the date. The current formula of "the Monday and Tuesday > following the first Sunday after St Giles' Day " is very hard to cope with > even if you know that St Giles' Day is 1 September. It means that when 1 > September is a Saturday, the fair is held at the earliest possible time (3 & 4 > September); but when 1 September is a Sunday, the fair is held at the latest > possible time (9 & 10 September). > > > Stephanie Jenkins > Headington, Oxford > Info about Stephanie Jenkins: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/stephaniejenkins
There is something spectacular about St Giles’ Fair: just once a year it is good to see something that contrasts so flashily with the antiquity of Oxford, even if you don’t want to partake of it. I particularly like to see the old rides, such as the Noyce Gallopers, built in about 1895 and working as well as ever, and the helter-skelter. And the service by the Vicar of St Michael at the Northgate beside the Gallopers on the Sunday evening is surely unique. There is no other fair quite like it. It’s also amusing to see Town enjoying itself while Gown winces (except perhaps for St John’s, who I understand share the big rents for the fair with the city council). And it’s good to see people put before traffic flow just once a year. I can see that St Giles’ Fair is a nuisance for north Oxford; but if St Clement’s Fair (which would get in my way) was revived, I would be delighted. Here are 62 historic images of the fair from the English Heritage website (if you can pick up this long URL): http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/search/results.aspx?index=0&mainQuery=st%20giles%20fair&searchType=all&form=home
Just went to the service of blessing at the carousel, with the Lord Mayor reading the lesson from the scripture. As usual, a very enjoyable (if somewhat surreal) civic event. It would be nice to transform St Giles' into something of an esplanade, but sadly the recent motion for this at the County Council was defeated: http://www.webcitation.org/5afLYh4px
I asked one of the small newsagents in St Giles what he thought of the Fair.
He said that while it was on, his takings increased fourfold!
Tony
On 7/9/08 23:45, "Kaihsu Tai" <kaihsu.tai@bioch.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Just went to the service of blessing at the carousel, with the Lord Mayor
> reading the lesson from the scripture. As usual, a very enjoyable (if
somewhat