Summer Fete 2007

Here are some pictures taken at Saint Mary's Summer Fete on 9th June 2007

Daniel Defoe is perhaps best known as the author of 'Robinson Crusoe'.  In the late 1600s, early 1700s he made a tour of England describing what he found.  The following is an extract of his report on the people of the 'marshy land' of South Essex. 

This was only about 300 years ago, and at that time the Prittlewell Fayre (or Fete) had been going (on and off) for at least 400 years! ...

"At this place may be said to end what we call the Hundreds of Essex; that is to say, the three hundreds or divisions, which include the marshy country, vis. Barnstaple Hundred, Rochford Hundred, and Dengy Hundred.

I have one remark more, before I leave this damp part of the world, and which I cannot omit on the womens account; namely, that I took notice of a strange decay of the sex here; insomuch, that all along this county it was very frequent to meet with men that had had from five or six, to fourteen or fifteen wives;
 

nay, and some more; and I was inform'd that in the marshes on the other side of the river over-against Candy  Island, there was a farmer, who was then living with the five and twentieth wife, and that his son who was but about 35 years old, had already had about fourteen; indeed this part of the story, I only had by report, tho' from good hands too; but the other is well known, and easie to be enquired in to, about Fobbing, Curringham, Thundersly, Benfleet, Prittlewell, Wakering, Great Stambridge, Cricksea, Burnham, Dengy, and other towns of the like situation:

 

The reason, as a merry fellow told me, who said he had had about a dozen and half of wives, (tho' I found afterwards he fibb'd a little) was this; That they being bred in the marshes themselves, and season'd to the place, did pretty well with it; but that they always went up into the hilly country, or to speak their own language into the uplands for a wife: That when they took the young lasses out of the wholesome and fresh air, they were healthy, fresh and clear, and well; but when they came out of their native air into the marshes among the fogs and damps, there they presently chang'd their complexion, got an ague or two, and seldom held it above half a year, or a year at most;
 

and then, said he, we go to the uplands again, and fetch another; so that marrying of wives was reckon'd a kind of good farm to them:  It is true the fellow told this in a kind of drollery, and mirth; but the fact, for all that, is certainly true; and that they have abundance of wives by that very means:  Nor is it less true, that the inhabitants in these places do not hold it out; as in other countries, and as first you seldom meet with a very antient people among the poor, as in other places we do, so, take it one with another, not one half of the inhabitants are natives of the place; but such as from other countries, or in other parts of this country settle here for the advantage of good farms; for which I appeal to any impartial enquiry, having myself examin'd into it critically in several places."
 

Wow!

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