London’s lost frost fairs
Discover the carnivals that broke out on the ice when the River Thames was turned into a winter wonderland
The city’s winter carnivals that took place on the Thames
Sometimes Londoners called it the ‘Blanket Fair’, other times ‘Freezeland Street’, ‘City Road’ or, rather grandiosely, ‘Frostiana’. But from 1309 to 1814, whenever the River Thames froze solid, an elaborate carnival would break out the ice. So roll up, roll up! Enter London’s lost frost fairs to discover a tent city of hastily assembled shops and pubs, circus performers and a wide variety of games. The rival of any royal extravaganza, expect customers from every strata of society, with more than one monarch making an appearance.
But be warned — its unique position also puts it outside of any authority’s jurisdiction, so there are no police to break up fights or catch pickpockets. The ice is also prone to suddenly crack, drowning more than one reveller in the depths below. But this just means the fair-goers to this once-in-ageneration event party like there’s no tomorrow.
BEHOLD, THE Liquid Thames froze O’ER
London’s frost fairs were a side effect of the Little Ice Age. While you might associate ice ages with cavemen and woolly mammoths, this one affected the world’s climate from the time of the Black Death until the Industrial Revolution. There are earlier accounts of the Thames freezing, such as in 695 and 1092, but these were one-offs. During the Little Ice Age, “the great streams [of England] were congealed” much more frequently.
The Little Ice Age’s causes are debated but are believed to have been a perfect storm for climate cooling — huge volcanic eruptions at a time when the Sun was experiencing unusually low sunspot activity. This meant that while the Sun was already
giving off less energy to warm the Earth’s surface, much of it was being reflected back into space by great plumes of volcanic ash lingering in the stratosphere.
While mean annual temperatures dipping by 0.6°C (1.1°F) across the Northern Hemisphere may not sound a lot, it had a dramatic impact. Europe was particularly affected as atmospheric patterns also blew Arctic air over the continent. Alpine glaciers expanded, obliterating farms and villages in Switzerland, France and elsewhere; Norse colonies in Greenland collapsed after they were cut off by sea ice; frequent cold winters and wet summers led to crop failures; and North Atlantic cod fisheries fled south to warmer waters.
However, while the overall trend was towards the world growing colder from the 14th century until the late 17th century, temperatures still fluctuated year on year. This meant a frost fair on the Thames was not guaranteed each winter and when it did happen, it might last for weeks or just a few days. In fact, there were only 24 known› winters during the Little Ice Age in which the portion of the Thames that snakes through London was recorded to have frozen over. On only a handful of those occasions was it was thick enough to host a fair so, with few exceptions, the fairs occurred just once in a generation.
The coldest winter in Britain during this time was the Great Frost of 1683-84. The Thames froze for ten weeks, with ice as thick as 28 centimetres (11 inches). Trees split as if hit by lightning and boats were crushed by the pressure of the ice. Beyond London, there were reports of solid ice extending for miles off the coasts of the southern North Sea, while the ground was frozen to depths of 69 centimetres (27 inches) near Manchester and 1.2 metres (4 feet) in Somerset.
Another factor that contributed specifically to the Thames freezing in the capital was the building of the Old London Bridge. Finished in 1205, this crossing was the main route to ferry people, goods and livestock from the City of London to Southwark for 600 years. But this Medieval bridge was supported by 19 closely packed arches, each boasting large piers known as starlings, and their breakwaters slowed the river down, making it more susceptible to freezing.
Large pieces of ice would also lodge among the arches, gradually blocking them and acting like a dam, preventing salty seawater to pass up the river that would have otherwise lowered the freezing point. Whether it was because the frozen river was thickest near the bridge or due to it being in the heart of the city, it was around this area that the city’s frost fairs would generally be held.
watermen make use Of BOOTHS TO GET THEIR PENCE
In 1309, an anonymous chronicler noted that the Thames froze at Christmas “and it lasted so long that people danced in the midst of it near a fire.” However, the first fair of significance opened on 21 December 1564 and lasted through to
January. Raphael Holinshed recorded boys playing football “as boldlie [sic] there as if it had been on the drie [sic] land”.
The frozen Thames must have been a wondrous sight, stretching for miles in all directions but the seizing up of the city’s main artery also put many livelihoods at risk. Brewers, bakers and washerwomen all struggled without a source of running water. However, the worst hit were the watermen, who transported people along the river in little boats. It’s thought they established the frost fairs out of necessity.
In 1621, the freeze lasted for eight weeks, so the out-of-work watermen guarded at the water-stairs, charging Londoners who wanted to step on the ice. Audaciously, another set of watermen would then charge them again when they got off on the opposite bank.
With this in mind, the watermen also set up a number of attractions to lure customers onto the river. They converted their boats into makeshift sleds to carry customers along the ice and sold food and drink from tents made of blankets resting upon crossed oar frames. It is unclear if this was the first time the watermen had organised a fair themselves or if they were doing as their predecessors had in previous years.
It wasn’t long before others cashed in. Hackney coachmen drove their horses out onto the ice to compete for custom on the new white highway. Traders set up their own booths and stalls, selling goods superior to anything the watermen could produce. Soon they had an entire street of primitive shops on the river.
In 1683, the Watermen’s Company appealed to the Court of Aldermen for help. They argued that as their guild had been given royal assent to operate the country’s waterways, they should have a monopoly on all river trade — including the frost fairs. While they had their sympathisers, the ethos of individualism and competition emerging at the close of the 17th century meant the court ruled against them. That winter saw the river host one of the largest frost fairs on record.
“LONDON’S frost fairs were a side Effect Of THE LITTLE ice age”
Known as the Blanket Fair, it lasted from December 1683 to February 1684. A double row of booths stretched from Temple Stairs to the South Bank. Oxen and “Lapland mutton” spit roasts drew crowds and stalls sold spiced buns, hot pudding pies and gingerbread, while costermongers wandered around selling fruits and nuts. In the makeshift taverns you could get warming luxuries like coffee and hot chocolate, but customers would be welcomed with the greeting “What lack ye, sir? Beer, ale or brandy?”
Hawkers sold souvenirs from simple trinkets and children’s toys to golden jewellery. Some forward-thinking businessmen also used the fair as a publicity stunt. Barbers demonstrated that even on ice their razors would not slip and a printer set up their press in the open air.
The press proved particularly successful, selling poems that customers could also have their names printed on. The diarist John Evelyn noted with astonishment “’twas estimated the printer gained about £5 a day for printing a line onely [sic] at sixpence a name, besides what he got by ballads.” Meanwhile, the watermen barely managed to scrape by while fending off the Water Bailiff, who was trying to tax their little booths.
’Tis DONE with great DELIGHT
In 1599, William Shakespeare’s theatre company dismantled their old playhouse in Shoreditch and transported the wooden frame over the Thames, reassembling it as the Globe in Southwark. The story goes that the actors hauled the timbers across the icy river in the dead of night. The Bard wrote Much Ado About Nothing the same year, so you can imagine the actor playing Don Pedro declaring, “Good morrow, Bendeick. Why, what’s the matter, / That you have such a February face, / So full of frost, of storms and cloudiness?” to a fair-goers who knew just how cold that look must have been. But although the Thames was “nigh frozen over” the night they moved to the Globe, they went be boat — the ice was too thin to stand on. There’s sadly no account of Shakespeare or his players capitalising on the frost fairs. However, others certainly did.
As one souvenir handbill from 1684 read: “Behold the wonder of this present age / A frozen river now becomes a stage.” While food and drink were popular attractions, frost fairs were as much like an illegal rave or a circus as they were a Christmas market. Music blared, entertainers recited bawdy verse and puppet shows were held. A “human salamander” seemingly ate glowing hot coals, sword-swallowers amazed audiences, an astrologer calling himself ‘Icedore Frostiface of Freeseland’ read fortunes, and figures on stilts wandered among the crowds.
A menagerie of exotic animals was also on display, ranging from a dog that could do tricks, to a cage full of monkeys, to “a booth with a phenix [sic] on it.” One such exhibitor in 1684 was James William Chipperfield, whose family developed the Chipperfield Circus into an elaborate show that endured until the 1950s.
As well as sledging and skating, there were also games you could pay to play. Along with nine-pin
“frost fairs were as much Like an ILLEGAL rave Or a circus as THEY were a christmas market”
bowling and hoopla, Londoners enjoyed the dizzy experience of a ‘Dutch whimsie’ — being spun around in a chair or a boat tied to a pole. Every roundabout in modern playgrounds is thought to be a descendent of this “whirling sledge”.
John Evelyn called the 1684 fair a “bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water”, while his equally prudish contemporary Roger Morrice complained, “All manner of debauchery upon the Thames continued upon the Lord’s Day and Monday”. Fair-goers could gamble and likely placed wagers on regular attractions like horse racing and blood sports. As well as seeing bears and bulls fight dogs, “throwing at cocks” was promoted at the 1684 fair. This involved a rooster being tied to a post and participants taking turns to throw weighted sticks at the bird until it died.
Prostitutes also ambled among the attractions, soliciting customers. The beleaguered watermen complained about women plying their trade in the Hackney coaches but it’s likely some of the tents served as brothels. With the waterman offering the only thing close to security, revellers had to watch out for pickpockets, too.
While Evelyn and Moore bemoaned the frost fair as a sign of social decay, others praised it for breaking down hierarchies. An event to rival any royal extravaganza, high society couldn’t resist the fun and games and even the poorest could at least enjoy the spectacle and get warm by a bonfire.
The dramatist Thomas Dekker noted the mixing “of all ages, of both sexes, of all professions” on the “common path” of the Thames in 1608. John Taylor, a part-time poet and possibly the only waterman to praise the frozen river, wrote approvingly, “Laws they count no more than Esops [sic] fables.” Perhaps this was because of the frozen Thames’ unique position outside of conventional authority’s jurisdiction, the fair’s overwhelming carnivalesque atmosphere, or because the ice was impermanent, so it was understood to only be a temporary suspension of social etiquette.
Despite the behaviour the fairs encouraged, even royalty couldn’t resist. Queen Elizabeth I walked upon the ice daily in 1564 to “shoot a few marks” with bow and arrow. King Charles II went one step further at the Blanket Fair, attending with some of the royal family to see “Great Britain’s wonder” on 31 January 1684. He even bought a memento from one of the printers, stamped with the date and their names. A French account claimed the Merry Monarch spent a whole night at the fair, while others say he joined in a foxhunt on the ice. Perhaps while accompanying the king, the royal army also fired a ceremonial salute with several cannons on the ice.
SEE what Things upon THE ice were DONE
There were more frost fairs in the 18th century and they offered much the same attractions. In 1715, live entertainment was provided by “Will Ellis the Poet and his wife Bess” who were “Rhiming [sic] on the Hard Frost.” Ox was again roasted by a Mr Atkins and Mr Hodginson, who claimed to be the descendents of the gentleman who had done the same in 1684. The painter William Hogarth bought a souvenir print for his pet pug, Trump. However, these later fairs also saw greater mechanisation, so the fairground attractions looked more like today’s with swing sets and — sources claim — some sort of clockwork car went on display.
The final fair was held in February 1814 and though it only lasted a few days, it went out in style. The ice followed a thick fog that enveloped the city and the surrounding country, allegedly lasting from 27 December 1813 to 3 January 1814.
Once it cleared, a grand mall was set-up by Blackfriars Bridge, dubbed ‘City Street’, boasting temporary taverns with names like ‘The City of Moscow’, ‘The Free and Easy’ and ‘Wellington Forever’. At least ten printers were set up and sold books with their postcards and poems while a full-blown casino offered roulette and a wheel of fortune. The watermen assumed their old position, charging two- or threepence for safe passage onto the ice. As the Londoners descended onto the frozen Thames en masse once more, a group of 70 people reportedly walked across the frozen water to South Bank all at once.
Various modern accounts claim an elephant walked across the ice at the final fair. While we would like to say this was led by a descendent of the Blanket Fair’s James William Chipperfield, whose family’s circus was now a booming success, the story may sadly be apocryphal. There are no known records from 1814 mentioning the animal, which would surely have been a talking point.
The fair lasted just four days as so many people and milder temperatures caused cracks to quickly appear in the ice. More than one person drowned and booths were carried away on ice flows. Damage to river barges was estimated at some £20,000, caused by giant fast-flowing chunks that had broken up. But even then, a large printing press, hungry for profits, was set up in defiance on an ice island near Westminster.
The Thames did freeze again after 1814 but not to the extent that anyone could walk on it.
The Little Ice Age was drawing to a close, ending after 1850, but the frost fairs were also a victim of progress. The Old London Bridge was beyond repair and had to be replaced in 1830 by the modern London Bridge. This, plus the creation of the Embankment in the 19th century, created a narrower, faster-flowing Thames that was less likely to freeze.
London’s lost frost fairs were always a celebration of impermanence, with participants never sure when the party would be over or when the floor was going to give way beneath their feet. We could never expect them to last forever.