Agricultural History Review, Volume 69 Part 1 (2021), p. 157

This revised edition of the 2015 publication, Appleby Gypsy Horse Fair, develops the material presented in its predecessor with new evidence and analysis that, as the author explains in the Preface represents ‘a more direct attempt to disentangle myth and reality’ (p. xii). In particular the author interrogates the folklore and speculation surrounding the origins and legal status of the fair, along with a more extensive focus on the often fractious relationship between fairgoers, wider public and the authorities. Today, Appleby Horse Fair, which is held in the Cumbrian town of Appleby-in-Westmorland between the first Thursday and Tuesday in June, is the largest annual gathering of the UK’s Gypsies and Travellers attracting around 40–50,000 visitors (p. 2). Connell draws from a range of primary materials from local sources as well as from reports, books and articles related to the historical and contemporary scholarly work on Gypsies and Travellers. Through a meticulous and thorough study of this evidence, Connell addresses two of the most enduring myths surrounding the Appleby Fair, and the Gypsies’ role in its evolution and development which, with the ‘reluctant involvement of the local authorities … inadvertently contributed to its modern status as a culturally significant media event’ (p. 9).

Firstly, the author takes issue with conventional wisdom that the fair stems from a Royal Charter granted by James II in 1685. The author notes that before the mid-twentieth century there is no mention of the fair having been granted a Royal Charter and neither does any evidence exist to suggest that King James II had any interest in, or dealings with, Gypsies. Connell’s investigation locates the myth’s origins to 1945 when a local Alderman, determined to find a way of ending the fair claimed that it dated from the supposed 1685 charter and that once it was found the Borough Council would have a mechanism to force the fair’s abolition. The elusive charter is yet to be found, but the myth took hold and, as ‘collections of photographs, tourist guides and websites proliferated, the 1685 charter story would be routinely repeated as fact’ (p. 18). Indeed, the failure to prove the charter’s existence has saved the fair from probable closure; its continuance being based on ‘prescriptive right’ or custom, the fair ‘is not an event with a programme and entrance fees to designated areas, organizers or owners [and so] the closure mechanism of the 1871 Fairs Act is of no relevance to it’ (p. 100).

Secondly, evidence sheds light on the notion that Appleby is part of a centuries-old pilgrimage for Gypsies and other travellers. The author charts the evolution of Appleby Fair (or New Fair) which like other fairs originated as a market for livestock and which was, for much of its history, essentially a drovers’ fair until the arrival of the railway in 1862. This spelled the end of the drovers’ association with the fair which, by the late nineteenth century, was exclusively concerned with ‘the exhibition and sale of horses of every description for which it is one of the best markets in the kingdom’ (p. 32). The fair’s association with Gypsies ‘can be with some certainty located in the first decade of the twentieth century’, when they were joined by itinerant potters, ‘who mustered with great force from their encampments on the Moor’ (p. 44). Connell gives short shrift to scholars who claim the exclusion of Gypsies from accounts of Appleby in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was due to their ‘othering’, noting that the scant attention given to Gypsies was due to their marginal participation at the fair as it was then primarily a drovers’ fair. With reduced attendance during World War II, the Gypsies consolidated their monopoly of the fair, cementing its association with the ‘caravan fraternity’.

The author details the periodic campaigns to close the fair (stymied through the lack of a mechanism to effect its closure) and those who have fought to keep the fair open. In the 1960s for example, the indomitable Gypsy, Silvester Gordon Bowell, whose skills at negotiating with the gorgio (non-Gypsy) authorities while simultaneously gaining the Gypsies’ compliance, saved the fair from the threat of closure and returned it to its former Fair Hill location. Boswell had correctly perceived that the authorities were not united in their opposition to the fair, and the author charts the ambivalent social attitudes and images of the fair in newspapers, where coverage varies ‘from the roseate to the bloodstained’ (p. 83), and among local residents and businesses, whose opinions remain equally divided. The book is supplemented with a range of illustrations and photographs of Appleby Fair from the past and present. The Appendices include intriguing recollections from a life-long resident of Appleby of the fair during her childhood in the 1930s, and an elderly Romany lady, whose late husband was a member of Boswell’s Gypsy committee, who laments the decline of the fair following the increasing presence of gorgio ‘so-called travellers’ (p. 106).

This is an impressive book that achieves its aim of separating myth from fact through rigorous empirical investigation, while remaining sensitive to the strong sense of connection and importance that the fair holds for many of Britain’s travelling communities who, if only briefly can become ‘part of the process of recapturing a lost world, and affirming that the rituals of family reunion, display of possessions, courtship and campfire camaraderie live on’ (p. 82).