Incompetent council killjoys have wrecked our ancient and eccentric English fair

Telegraph

11-05-2025

Milverton is just a few winding, high-hedged, wild-garlic-banked roads away from us. It's a startlingly pretty west Somerset village of Georgian houses, with a street pattern that dates back to the medieval period, centring around a church. St Michael's stands prominent on the hill, overlooking a settlement that was prominent even at the time of the Domesday Book. There's a village store, a very fine piano tuner and a handsome pub, the latter bang on trend by being currently closed.
But it has something that few such villages have – an event that can be traced back to the start of the 1700s. 1708 to be precise. It's called the Milverton Street Fair and it's been a high point of the May Day Bank Holiday Monday for us since we moved here just four years ago.
Arrive at the head of the town, near the village shop, and you can see the fair stretching down the straight avenue of Fore Street, at the bottom of which, it turns slowly to the left.
It's a magnificent sight with a very English rabble of stalls. You can peruse antiques, second-hand books, cakes, local gins, plants and vegetables. A reward of making it down the street is the Exmoor ale stand and, in a damp alley off the main drag, you can catch the plonky plonk sounds of a rickety piano, around which you'll find locals laughing, singing and sipping cider. Tied up high between the buildings is, of course, bunting. To make it down the street is an achievement in itself. It is rammed, cheeks couldn't get closer to jowls.
Last year, with a chilli plant in one hand, cakes and a child in another, the reward of a pint of Exmoor Gold at the end of the main street felt just. It's a wonderfully friendly and happy occasion. At least it was. On May Day Bank Holiday Monday this week, there was no sign of the fair down Fore Street. Instead the town's own Silver Street Band, the pottery stall and all the other ingredients of the fair had moved to the recreation ground off what is known as Butts Way.
At which point, no disrespect to the stall holders, it just became another English fair in an English field in England.
So I sniffed around as to why this had happened. And I heard mutterings of a lack of volunteers, and of beastly passing drivers moaning about related traffic jams and road closures and abusing the stewards.
None of which seemed a reason to move the fair until I tracked down a source on the committee who revealed the real reason behind the move.
'This year,' my Milverton mole revealed, 'we were set to be charged £1,500 by the highways department.' There was, they added, 'no charge for the road closure' in previous years. So that was it. The Blob did it. The bureaucratic regime that is Somerset council scratching around to find ways to plug its £300 million property debt and £100 million funding gap; it recently declared a 'financial emergency' due to rising costs.
As I have written here recently, it has announced plans to introduce universal parking charges in villages and towns across our part of the world so perhaps this charge was another fruitless attempt to gain miniscule amounts of revenue.
Or worse, it was an issue of health and safety, the new costs dreamt up to pay for signage for the re-routing of emergency vehicles, for example. Or indeed to factor in the dangers of so many people congregating in such small spaces.
Which is, of course, the whole point, the whole wonderful and unique fun of the occasion and the reason why the knackered antiques, shabby books and pottery gain a certain cachet in that atmosphere. Dare I say it, the music of the Silver Street Band gains a je ne sais quoi when you come across its old geezers strumming their guitars and blowing into their bassoons on Silver Street itself.
Sure, there are risks that if you had a heart attack in the middle of that scrum there might be challenges. But as far as I know, there have been no fatalities at the fair and unlike that other street bonanza, The Notting Hill Carnival, Milverton can't compete when it comes to stabbings.
It is frightfully expensive when the sky falls on one's head and so our killjoy administrators feel they must plan for this eventuality.
Thus another little precious chunk of England, in all its glorious, ancient eccentricity, is cut out by The Blob of bureaucracy and turned to dust. As long as it's in a dry field with plenty of parking or nice indoor shopping centre, your fair is safe. But if you're cheese-rolling, soapbox-racing, nettle-eating, hurling the silver ball or charming worms, if there's any measure of chaotic English fun, beware, The Blob will find a way of banning it.