Wychwood Forest Fair

Reintroduced in 2000 Wychwood Forest Fair is Wychwood’s green country show.

WYCHWOOD FOREST FAIR 2010 - Southdown Farm, Crawley Road, Witney, OX29 9TG - Sunday 5th September 2010!

Our site for 2010 is on the edge of Witney, on land recently acquired by the Friends of Wychwood to plant a Community Wood, and we aim to launch our Public Appeal for funds to achieve this. Consequently we are wish to attract even more visitors to the Fair, for our own benefit as well as that of our traders.

The Wychwood Forest Fair, of which this will be the eleventh, has become a popular annual event celebrating the diversity and richness of both the natural world and the working and leisure activities of local people living within the bounds of the old Royal Hunting Forest of Wychwood.  

This year’s event will include the promotion of the usual stalls for: Local Foods; Rural Crafts; Community Initiative Groups; Conservation Groups; the Wychwood Project; Friends of Wychwood; Tourism; Recycling; Competitions for Children and Adults;  Fun Fair; Educational Organisations; Arts and Crafts;  Story Tellers; Second-hand Book Stall; Morris Dancers:                         

The Wychwood Brewery. The Friends of Wychwood Tea Tent, and local Food Suppliers will all be there to provide Refreshments.

Follow the signs to the site. Admission £6 per adult, under 16s free. Parking free

For more information about the Wychwood Project call 01993 814142, or   visit www.wychwoodproject.org.

Photogallery of Forest Fair 2009

Local food, farm produce and arts

Typical activities at the Fair each year include displays by the Wychwood Project, the local Wildlife Trust, the Wychwood Pond group, and many other local conservation and community groups. A wide range of rural crafts, some of which  allow you to ‘have a go’, are on display. As well as an arts and crafts tent, there is a children’s Fun Fair, a Green Man children’s story teller, and several local Morris dancing sides. There are plenty of local food suppliers and farm produce, lots of refreshments, locally produced ice cream and - last but not least - a beer tent selling beer from the local Wychwood Brewery, based in Witney.

18th Century beginnings 

Somewhat surprisingly the Fair originally began as a non-conformist enterprise in the late 18th century, aiming to replace the drunken disorder of local events such as St. Giles’ Fair in Oxford and nearby Witney Feast. This increasingly successful Forest Fair was held at Newhill Plain, a large clearing in the Forest about a mile south west of Cornbury Park.

In the first half of the 19th century, Lord Churchill, the then Forest Ranger, was often in attendance, sometimes accompanied by the Duke of Marlborough. The stalls were laid out to create broad regular streets, along which the aristocracy processed in their coaches at the commencement of the Fair. The local yeomanry band played and special constables kept order. Perhaps the police were not too successful, because the event was often cancelled in the early 1830s, during years of considerable political unrest.

50,000 visitors

At its height the fair continued for two days. Every nook and cranny of nearby Charlbury was filled with visitors. As well as stalls selling practical items such as textiles and provisions, there were sometimes travelling theatres, menageries, boxing booths, dancing salons and fireworks in the evening.

The Fair reached its zenith in 1853, when the nearby Oxfordshire, Worcestershire and Wolverhampton Railway - now the Cotswold Line - was opened. Reports say that up to 50,000 visitors attended the Fair that year. But also at this time an Act of Parliament was passed to disafforest Wychwood. The original Forest Fair finally ceased in 1856, when Lord Churchill closed it down to curb drunkenness and debauchery. Rather like a modern landlord dealing with travellers, trenches were dug across the site of the Fair to keep out any would-be stallholders. Possibly the alleged drunkenness was a pretext, because a long-standing dispute between the Crown and Lord Churchill was settled by the clearance in the late 1850s of half the woodland remnant near Leafield for agriculture, where seven new Crown farms were created, with the other half passing indisputably to Lord Churchill.

The first modern Fair, organised by the Wychwood Project and the Friends of Wychwood, was held at Combe on a modest scale in 2000 to celebrate the creation of the Wychwood Way, a 37 mile circular trail around Wychwood. Subsequent Fairs have been held annually at different locations around the Wychwood area - including Cogges Farm Museum near Witney, Lower Farm Ramsden, Charlbury and Capps Lodge - to demonstrate the extent of the former Forest and to involve more people in the activities of the Wychwood Project.

Rural skills

Each year the modern Fair, which tries to avoid much of the commercialisation of so many modern country shows, has emphasised a different theme, such as local environmental activities, revived rural skills and locally produced food.