East Ilsley Sheep Fair
The sheep fairs & markets held at East Ilsley on the Berkshire Downs (SU 493892) were not “second only to Smithfield” in size and importance, as the small information plaque on the old Oxford to Chichester Road boasts1. (See #1,2).
However, a quarter of a million sheep changed hands annually there in the first half of the 19th Century. The village was known as “Chipping Ilsley” in the Middle Ages, then as “Market Ilsley” in the mid-17th Century. (Chipping from Anglo-Saxon cheap = buy, so a market place-name.)
The markets were held twice monthly, from April to October from 1620 till 1934 (#3), the sheep being held in pens all the way up the High Street, on both sides, from the Crown & Horns to St. Mary's Church (#4 for 1890 6" map). The sales were held in the field on the right in #1, where the two cars are parked. At the market's peak there were 12 pubs in the village.
At this point it may be useful to discuss the differences between Markets & Fairs. Fairs were less frequent – there are seven plus a hiring fair2 advertised in #3, but most towns had three or four a year. Markets, however, were weekly or fortnightly.
Also, Fairs were bigger & had more variety, entertainment and were much longer – some fairs lasted for two weeks, or until the last beasts were sold. And at fairs, the buyer, not the seller – as was usual in markets – paid the charges and the auctioneer's commission. Drovers would have approved of this!
According to Mr George Woodage, who remembers helping his father at the sales, two Scottish drovers used to start from (the Lowlands?) with 50 sheep; by the time they had reached East Ilsley, they had between two and three thousand.3
And whither the wether after being bought at East Ilsley? Their wool was made into cloth at Winchester & Newbury, but most of the animals were bought, according to Pigot's Directory (1830), by graziers from Hertfordshire & Buckinghamshire, to fatten for the London market.
(There is also a track starting/finishing at SU 591850 south of Wallingford which leads directly to East Ilsley. The stretch at the Wallingford end is named 'Halfpenny Lane'... My thanks go to Pauline Stevens of the Stroud Local History Society for bringing that to my attention.)
The fairs were not interrupted by the advent of the railways: special trains arrived, 30-40 wagons long, at Compton, and the beasts were walked less than 2 miles to Ilsley. It was road transport that killed the fair, in 1934.
The green lanes leading to East Ilsley on the OS Explorer 170 show how traffic came to the village from every direction.
Special thanks to Keith MacDonald for sending me the map in #4.
1 At Weyhill Fair near Andover a hundred thousand sheep could be traded in a single day.
(You can see the Oxford-Chichester road on John Ogilby's 1675 map of Britain's roads. The best way is via Dr Chris Mullen's marvellous website www.fulltable.com Click M on the homepage, click on ‘Maps Menu', and Ogilby's Britannia is fourth on the list. Go to Plate 81 and you need the second strip from the left to find East Ilsley, described on the map as A great sheep market.)
2 Where employers and would-be employees could meet.
3 My thanks to Nigel Wardell for his splendid booklet “Far Famed for Sheep & Wool” for much of this information. It is published by Sigma Books for the East Ilsley Local History Society, ISBN 1-905291-10-8. The society's website is www.eastilsleyhistory.com
