The Cambridge Meeting , 1894 . 
455 
If the husbandmen who rent the land, do not get their corn off before a 
certain day in August, the fair-keepers may trample it under foot and spoil 
it to build their booths, or tents, for all the fair is kept in teuts and booths. 
On the other hand, to balance that severity, if the fair-keepers have not 
done their business of the fair, and removed and cleared the field by 
another certain day in September, the ploughmen may come in again, 
with plough and cart, and overthrow all, and trample it into the dirt ; 
and as for the filth, dung, straw, &c. necessarily left by the fair-keepers, 
the quantity of which is very great, it is the farmers’ fees, and makes them 
full amends for the trampling, riding, and carting upon, and hardening the 
ground. 
It is impossible to describe all the parts and circumstances of this fair 
exactly ; the shops are placed in rows like streets, whereof one is called 
Cheapside ; and here, as in several other streets, are all sorts of trades, who 
sell by retail, and who come principally from London with their goods ; 
scarce any trades are omitted — goldsmiths, toyshops, brasiers, turners, 
milliners, haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers, pewterers, cliina-ware- 
houses, and in a word all trades that can be named in London ; with 
coffee-houses, taverns, brandy-shops, and eating-houses, innumerable, and 
all in tents, and booths, as above. 
This great street reaches from the road, which as I said goes from 
Cambridge to Newmarket, turning short out of it to the right towards the 
river, and holds in a line near half a mile quite down to the river-side : in 
another street parallel with the road are like rows of booths, but larger, 
and more intermingled with wholesale dealers ; and one side, passing out 
of this last street to the left hand, is a formal great square, formed by the 
largest booths, built in that form, and which they call the Duddery ; whence 
the name is derived, what its signification is, I could never yet learn, though 
I made all possible search into it. The area of this square is about 80 to 
100 yards, where the dealers have room before every booth to take down 
and open their packs, and to bring in waggons to load and unload. 
This place is separated, and peculiar to. the wholesale dealers in the 
woollen manufacture. Here the booths or tents are of a vast extent, have 
different apartments, and the quantities of goods they bring are so great, 
that the insides of them look like another Blackwell Hall, being as vast 
warehouses piled up with goods to the top. In this Duddery, as I have 
been informed, there have been sold one hundred thousand pounds’ worth of 
woollen manufactures in less than a week's time, besides the prodigious 
trade carried on here, by wholesale men, from London, and all parts of 
England, who transact their business wholly in their pocket-books, and 
meeting their chapmen from all parts, make up their accounts, receive money 
chiefly in bills, and take orders : These they say exceed by far the sales of 
goods actually brought to the fair, and delivered in kind ; it being frequent 
for the London wholesale men to carry back orders from their dealers for 
ten thousand pounds’ worth of goods a man, and some much more. This 
especially respects those people, who deal in heavy goods, as wholesale 
grocers, salters, brasiers, iron-merchants, wine-merchants, and the like ; but 
does not exclude the dealers in woollen manufactures, and especially in 
mercery goods of all sorts, the dealers in which generally manage their 
business in this manner. 
Here are clothiers from Halifax, Leeds, Wakefield and Huddersfield in 
Yorkshire, and from Rochdale, Bury, &c.,in Lancashire, with vast quantities 
of Yorkshire cloths, kerseys, pennistons, cottons, &c., with all sorts of 
Manchester ware, fustians, and things made of cotton wool ; of which the 
quantity is so great, that they told me there were near a thousand horse- 
packs of such goods from that side of the country, and these took up a 
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