Wellington H2A

Wellington Midsummer Fayre

The 2024 Fayre takes place on Saturday 8th June. We’ll have a packed programme – singers, bands, choirs, dancers, and a costumed procession modelled on one first recorded in 1773! The event is funded with help from Wellington Town Partnership, our main business sponsor DB Roberts estate agents and our supporting sponsors Rowton Brewery and Anthony’s of Wellington. Have you got somewhere to display an event poster? Download it here:

ABOUT THE MIDSUMMER FAYRE

The Midsummer Fayre is a foot-tapping, feel-good spectacular that takes place annually on the second Saturday in June, 10am – 3pm around Wellington’s Market Square, All Saints Church and Market Hall. Organised by Wellington H2A and All Saints Church, it is funded with support from Wellington Town Partnership and local businesses, and sees thousands of people coming out to enjoy the town. With around 40 stalls set up outside the parish church, music and dancing throughout the day and a costumed procession first recorded in 1773, its a day no Wellingtonian should miss!

WHO WILL BE PERFORMING?

This year you can expect performances from Wellington Brass Band, Odd Socks Folk Band, The Severn Valley Stompers, Above My Head Puppets, The Belfrey Theatre, The Telfordaires, Hadley Orpheus Male Voice Choir, Wrekin View School Choir, The Wellington W.I. Ukuladies and ToriArts. New for this year, we’ll be joined by The Stray Horns roaming brass quartet – they move around but they’re hard to miss. Street entertainment will come from The Boardroom Games Master and the Conwy Jester, with Jack the Jester hosting his usual circus skills tent in the churchyard. For the full schedule, download the PDF below:

BOOKING A STALL

We begin taking stall bookings in March each year. Existing traders are given the opportunity to book first before we open up any remaining spaces for new traders. To enquire about stall bookings use the About Us page. UPDATE: Almost all stalls for the 2024 event are now booked, with just a couple of spaces commercial traders (not community groups) available.

A BIG THANK YOU TO OUR EVENT SPONSORS

This year we are grateful to DB Roberts, Rowton Brewery and Anthony’s of Wellington for being our business sponsors. If you run a local business and would like to get involved in future years, here’s how it works…

As our main sponsor, £500 will get you the following:

• a full page advert on the reverse of our event programme (c.3000 hard copies printed plus online PDF shared widely online)
• article and photo of you on the H2A website
• mentions in our press releases before and after the event
• mentions via our Facebook and Twitter accounts (combined followership of 1,500) and on Love Wellington (8,400 followers)
• a 3m x 3m stall space at the event where you can display banners, hand out literature etc.

As one of our supporting sponsors, £250 will get you the following:

• a third of a page advert in our event programme (c.3000 hard copies printed plus online PDF shared widely)
• article and photo of you on the H2A website
• mentions in our press releases before and after the event
• mentions via our Facebook and Twitter accounts (combined followership of 1,500) and on Love Wellington (8,400 followers)
• a 3m x 3m stall space at the event where you can display banners, hand out literature etc.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: PICTURES FROM PAST FAYRES SINCE 2008

These photos from past events will give you an idea of what the whole thing is about…

Origins

June fayres were taking place in Wellington at least as far back as the 13th century, when the town’s Market Charter of 1244 sanctioned a fayre to take place on the Vigil, Feast and Morrow of St Barnabas (10th-12th June). An important commercial event in Wellington’s calendar, it is likely that street entertainers would have been there to make the most of the large crowds and long hours of daylight – just as they are today.

Five hundred years later in the 1770s, the June fayres were still taking place, but the town’s most colourful annual celebration seems to have been the Wellington Jubilee. This was staged slightly earlier in the year at Whitsun, and was advertised in the newly established Shrewsbury Chronicle newspaper from 1773 – 78. Described then as an ‘ancient festival’, it perhaps dated back much further. It comprised ‘a breakfast of tea, coffee and chocolate’ on The Green (the area just north of the parish church), followed by a costumed procession through town and, at night, a ‘Ball and Assembly’.

It is from these past fayres and Jubilees that today’s re-vived Midsummer Fayre takes its inspiration, stirring together six centuries of festivities and folk culture from the 13th to the 19th centuries, when Wellington’s June fayres disappeared.