Banbury Michaelmas Fair: from hiring fair to street funfair

The Michaelmas Fair is Banbury's big October street funfair, filling the Horse Fair, North Bar, the Market Place and Bridge Street from, by tradition, the first Wednesday after 10 October to the Saturday. It began as something quite different. For centuries this was the Mop, the hiring fair where farm workers and servants came to find a place for the year.

Fairs in Banbury from 1154

The town's fairs are older than the Michaelmas one. The Victoria County History records an annual fair (opens in a new tab) in Whit week first held in 1154, when Eynsham Abbey sent its Pentecostal procession to Banbury to advertise it. By 1329 the bishop held two fairs. A tumult at the fair in 1334, and a court of pie powder held there to settle disputes on the spot, show it was busy and sometimes rough.

The charter of 1554, which made Banbury a borough, granted two fairs a year on the feasts of St Peter ad Vincula and St Luke, and the charter of 1608 changed the dates. The number kept growing: a deposition of 1657 and 1658 said seven fairs had long been held and had since increased to nine. Some were specialist days, including a leather fair and a fish fair. They could also stop. In 1760 they were moved out to Weeping Cross because of a smallpox epidemic.

The Mop

The fair we now call Michaelmas appears as a hiring fair in 1677, when the county history notes one known as the Mop, where people looking for work wore badges to show their trades.

You will read that the hiring tradition began after the Black Death in the fourteenth century. We have found no evidence for that at Banbury. The first record we can find is the one of 1677, so we would call the Mop at least 350 years old and leave it there.

The dates moved too. When Britain changed calendars in 1752, 11 days were dropped, and Michaelmas on 29 September fell 11 days earlier in the farming year. Old Michaelmas, 10 October, kept the old rhythm of the year. In 1836 the newly reformed corporation abolished the tolls on its fairs. By then the hiring fairs were in March and after Old Michaelmas. There were two following Old Michaelmas, and the later of them was known as the runaway fair. We have not found a contemporary explanation of the name.

From hiring to whirligigs

The pleasure side was there long before the hiring stopped. A note in George Herbert's memoir Shoemaker's Window, quoted in the Banbury Historical Society's journal (opens in a new tab), calls the Michaelmas Fair a hiring fair, or Mop, and also a great pleasure fair.

By the end of the nineteenth century the October hiring fair was one of only three specialised fairs left, alongside two horse fairs, and it was partly a pleasure fair. A witness quoted in the county history calls it 'a rather rough fair consisting of shows and whirligigs, and shooting galleries'. Boxing was still among the attractions after 1837.

The Wilsons and the golden key

The fair today is run by the Wilson family, trading as Bob Wilson's Funfairs, the lessees. Cherwell District Council described the fair as owned by the Wilsons (opens in a new tab) in 2024, and called it a chartered event that has been part of the town for over 400 years.

The opening is the one piece of ceremony left. On the Wednesday afternoon a member of the family presents a giant golden key at the Town Hall, the Town Mayor and the chairman of Cherwell District Council declare the fair open, and they tour the fair with the key. Any ride it touches gives the children on it a free ride. The trade paper The World's Fair credits Willie and Emily Wilson (opens in a new tab) with starting the free-ride custom.

Some attractions are old friends. Harry Hebborn's Gallopers and a fun house were on the Horse Fair in 2021, with dodgems by the Market Place and a Storm Booster in Bridge Street. The line-up changes each year, because the rides belong to individual showmen who travel from fair to fair.

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How the fair runs now

The pattern is the first Wednesday after 10 October to the Saturday: it opened on 13 October in 2021 and ran 16 to 19 October in 2024, 15 to 18 October in 2025 and 14 to 17 October in 2026. A trial fourth day began in 2023 and has stayed since. No date for the next fair had been announced when we checked in November 2026, so the next one is to be confirmed by the council.

In 2024 the council gave these times: the official opening at 4pm on the Wednesday, opening at midday on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and a family day on the Saturday with free street entertainment. Check the council's and the town council's pages for the year you come, because the details change. Do not plan on driving into the centre. Road and car park closures start on the Tuesday and last until the fair has gone. Our parking page has the alternatives and the Banbury station guide covers the train.

Two more things are worth planning around. The town's Thursday and Saturday market does not run in fair week, as the council said for 2024, and the Market Place is all rides, so anyone coming for the market should choose another week. And if you are bringing children, Saturday is the day the council set aside for families in 2024.

What to do around it

The fair runs past both of the town's best-known sights. Banbury Cross is on the Horse Fair, in among the rides, and the medieval High Cross story tells how proclamations were made there. The Banbury guide and our things to do in Banbury cover the rest of the town if you are making a day of it.