Event   

Bow Fair

Categories: Commerce

Event

Known as the Green Goose fair, it was held on the Thursday after Pentecost. A green goose was a young or mid-summer goose, and also a slang term for a cuckold or a low woman. In 1630, John Taylor, a poet wrote 'At Bow, the Thursday after Pentecost, there is a fair of green geese ready rost, where, as a goose is ever dog cheap there, the sauce is over somewhat sharp and deare', which used the double entendre to describe the drunken and rowdy behaviour of the crowds. By the mid-19th century, the authorities had had enough and the fair was suppressed.

Credit for this entry to: Alan Patient of www.plaquesoflondon.co.uk

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Bow Fair

Commemorated ati

Bow Fair Field

Bow Fair Field Site of the annual Whitsun fair stopped in 1823 due to rowdyis...

Read More

Other Subjects

Pasqua Rosee's Head

Pasqua Rosee's Head

First London coffee house, opened by Pasqua Rosée.  The Telegraph produced a good article about coffee houses in London.

Place, Commerce, Food & Drink

1 memorial
International Exhibition + RHS Garden, South Ken

International Exhibition + RHS Garden, South Ken

Under the direction of Prince Albert the profits of the 1851 Great Exhibition were used to purchase land in South Kensington for cultural and educational use. Most of the northern half was, 1861-88...

Event, Commerce, Museums / Libraries

1 memorial
East London Toy Factory

East London Toy Factory

Opened by Sylvia Pankhurst as an answer to the dozens of tiny failing workshops where women were paid a pittance. Toys were no longer being imported from Germany, so the factory employed 59 women t...

Building, Children, Commerce, Gender Issues

1 memorial
Ship Tavern

Ship Tavern

Founded: AD 1549. Rebuilt: AD 1923 The Ship Tavern This tavern was established in the year 1549. During the proscription of the Roman Catholic religion it was used as a shelter for priests and se...

Place, Commerce, Food & Drink

1 memorial
Sir Joseph Lyons

Sir Joseph Lyons

Sir Joseph Nathaniel Lyons was a pioneer of mass catering. Chairman of J. Lyons and Co. Born Kennington,his father being a Jewish itinerant watch seller. Joseph was apprenticed to an optician. Mov...

Person, Commerce, Community / Clubs, Food & Drink

1 memorial

Previously viewed

Borough of Hampstead

Borough of Hampstead

A Metropolitan borough of the County of London. It was amalgamated with the Metropolitan Boroughs of St Pancras and Holborn to form the London Borough of Camden.

Group, Politics & Administration

3 memorials
Shoreham Bridge

Shoreham Bridge

Suspension bridge over the River Adur in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex. Designed by William Tierney Clark with Captain Samuel Brown. It was replaced in 1923.

Building, Transport

1 memorial
William Hammer, Mayor of Hackney

William Hammer, Mayor of Hackney

Councillor William Hammer JP, Mayor of Hackney in 1912.

Person, Politics & Administration

1 memorial
William A. O'Neil

William A. O'Neil

Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organisation in September 2001.

Person, Politics & Administration

1 memorial
Edward Willis

Edward Willis

From Historic England: Engineer and architect to the Chiswick Urban District Council in 1921. Also designed the Memorial Fund's Chiswick War Memorial Rest Homes, Burlington Lane. Housing disabled s...

Person, Architecture, Engineering

2 memorials