The timeless attraction of the traditional English summer fête

Traditional garden fêtes may have been thin on the ground this year, but it will take more than a few months in quarantine to snuff out an English tradition which, as these rare archive pictures illustrate, is as old as the hills that serve as their backdrop.
By David Behrens
Published 20th Jun 2020, 06:00 BST
Roses and Poke Bonnets At Old English Fayre, Young women from East Riding villages decorating themselves with roses at the massed 'Old English Fayre' held at North Fernl, East Yorkshire, yesterday (Sat), North Fernly, East Yorkshire. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Roses and Poke Bonnets At Old English Fayre, Young women from East Riding villages decorating themselves with roses at the massed 'Old English Fayre' held at North Fernl, East Yorkshire, yesterday (Sat), North Fernly, East Yorkshire. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Roses and Poke Bonnets At Old English Fayre, Young women from East Riding villages decorating themselves with roses at the massed 'Old English Fayre' held at North Fernl, East Yorkshire, yesterday (Sat), North Fernly, East Yorkshire. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

It is a season that starts with dances around the Maypole, and ends, or used to, with the weighing of the first gooseberries of autumn – a tradition that endures to this day in the North York Moors village of Egton Bridge.

In between are cake stalls, carousels and all manner of fairground games, from the politically incorrect Aunt Sally, in which contestants throw sticks at a model of a women’s head, to the arcane Yorkshire ball game of knurr and spell. Taken together, they are as sure a sign of summer as a wet bank holiday weekend.

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26th July 1939: Children in fancy dress costume, though the one dressed as a nurse is taking it too seriously as she treats a 'casualty'. (Photo by John F. Stephenson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)26th July 1939: Children in fancy dress costume, though the one dressed as a nurse is taking it too seriously as she treats a 'casualty'. (Photo by John F. Stephenson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
26th July 1939: Children in fancy dress costume, though the one dressed as a nurse is taking it too seriously as she treats a 'casualty'. (Photo by John F. Stephenson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

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