keepers, the quantity of which is very great, it is the farmers’
fees, and makes them full amends for the trampling, riding, and
carting upon, and hardening the ground.
It is impossible to describe all the parts and circumstances of
this fair exactly; the shops are placed in rows like streets,
whereof one is called Cheapside; and here, as in several other
streets, are all sorts of trades, who sell by retail, and who come
principally from London with their goods; scarce any trades are
omitted – goldsmiths, toyshops, brasiers, turners, milliners,
haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers, pewterers, china-
warehouses, and in a word all trades that can be named in London;
with coffee-houses, taverns, brandy-shops, and eating-houses,
innumerable, and all in tents, and booths, as above.
This great street reaches from the road, which as I said goes from
Cambridge to Newmarket, turning short out of it to the right
towards the river, and holds in a line near half a mile quite down
to the river-side: in another street parallel with the road are
like rows of booths, but larger, and more intermingled with
wholesale dealers; and one side, passing out of this last street to
the left hand, is a formal great square, formed by the largest
booths, built in that form, and which they call the Duddery; whence
the name is derived, and what its signification is, I could never
yet learn, though I made all possible search into it. The area of
this square is about 80 to 100 yards, where the dealers have room
before every booth to take down, and open their packs, and to bring
in waggons to load and unload.
This place is separated, and peculiar to the wholesale dealers in
the woollen manufacture. Here the booths or tents are of a vast
extent, have different apartments, and the quantities of goods they
bring are so great, that the insides of them look like another
Blackwell Hall, being as vast warehouses piled up with goods to the
top. In this Duddery, as I have been informed, there have been
sold one hundred thousand pounds worth of woollen manufactures in
less than a week’s time, besides the prodigious trade carried on
here, by wholesale men, from London, and all parts of England, who
transact their business wholly in their pocket-books, and meeting
their chapmen from all parts, make up their accounts, receive money
chiefly in bills, and take orders: These they say exceed by far the
sales of goods actually brought to the fair, and delivered in kind;
it being frequent for the London wholesale men to carry back orders
from their dealers for ten thousand pounds’ worth of goods a man,
and some much more. This especially respects those people, who
deal in heavy goods, as wholesale grocers, salters, brasiers, iron-
merchants, wine-merchants, and the like; but does not exclude the
dealers in woollen manufactures, and especially in mercery goods of
all sorts, the dealers in which generally manage their business in
this manner.
Here are clothiers from Halifax, Leeds, Wakefield and Huddersfield
in Yorkshire, and from Rochdale, Bury, etc., in Lancashire, with
vast quantities of Yorkshire cloths, kerseys, pennistons, cottons,
etc., with all sorts of Manchester ware, fustiains, and things made
of cotton wool; of which the quantity is so great, that they told
me there were near a thousand horse-packs of such goods from that
side of the country, and these took up a side and half of the
Duddery at least; also a part of a street of booths were taken up
with upholsterer’s ware, such as tickings, sackings, kidderminster
stuffs, blankets, rugs, quilts, etc.
In the Duddery I saw one warehouse, or booth with six apartments in
it, all belonging to a dealer in Norwich stuffs only, and who, they
said, had there above twenty thousand pounds value in those goods,
and no other.
Western goods had their share here also, and several booths were
filled as full with serges, duroys, druggets, shalloons,
cantaloons, Devonshire kerseys, etc., from Exeter, Taunton,
Bristol, and other parts west, and some from London also.
But all this is still outdone at least in show, by two articles,
which are the peculiars of this fair, and do not begin till the