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The Cambridge Meeting , 1894 . 
side and half of the Doddery at least ; also a part of a street of booths were 
taken up with upholsterer’s ware, such as tickings, sackings, Kidderminster 
staffs, blankets, rugs, quilts, &c. 
In the Duddery I saw one warehouse, or booth with six apartments in 
it, all belonging to a dealer in Norwich stuffs only, and who, they said, had 
there above twenty thousand pounds value in those goods, and no other. 
Western goods had their share here also, and several booths were filled 
as full with serges, duroys, druggets, shalloons, cantaloons, Devonshire 
kerseys, &c., from Exeter, Taunton, Bristol, and other parts west, and some 
from London also. 
But all this is still outdone at least in show, by two articles, which are 
the peculiars of this fair, and do not begin till the other part of the fair, 
that is to say for the woollen manufacture, begins to draw to a close. Tbese 
are the wool and the hops ; as for the hops, there is scarce any price fixed 
for hops in England, till they know how they sell at Stourbridge fair ; the 
quantity that appears in the fair is indeed prodigious, and they, as it were, 
possess a large part of the field on which the fair is kept to themselves ; 
they are brought directly from Chelmsford in Essex, from Canterbury and 
Maidstone in Kent, and from Farnham in Surrey, besides what are brought 
from London, the growth of those and other places. 
Inquiring why this fair should be thus, of all other places in England, 
the centre of that trade ; and so great a quantity of so bulky a commodity 
be carried thither so far ; I was answered by one thoroughly acquainted 
with that matter thus : the hops, said he, for this part of England, grow 
principally in the two counties of Surrey and Kent, with an exception only 
to the town of Chelmsford in Essex, and there are very few planted any- 
where else. 
There are indeed in the west of England some quantities growing : as at 
Wilton, near Salisbury; at Hereford and Broomsgrove, near Wales, and 
the like ; but the quantity is inconsiderable, and the places remote, so that 
none of them come to London. 
As to the north of England, they formerly used but few hops there, 
their drink being chiefly pale smooth ale, which required no hops, and con- 
sequently they planted no hops in all that part of England, north of the 
Trent ; nor did I ever see one acre of hop-ground planted beyond Trent in 
my observation ; but as for some years past, they not only brew great 
quantities of beer in the north, but also use hops in the brewing their ale 
much more than they did before ; so they all come south of Trent to buy 
their hops ; and here being vast quantities brought, it is great part of their 
back carriage into Yorkshire, and Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, 
and all those counties ; nay, of late, since the Union, even to Scotland itself ; 
for I must not omit here also to mention, that the river Grant, or Cam, 
which runs close by the north-west side of the fair in its way from Cam- 
bridge to Ely, is navigable, and that by this means, all heavy goods are 
brought even to the fair-field, by water carriage from London and other 
parts ; first to the port of Lynn, and then in barges up the Ouse, from the 
Ouse into the Cam, and so, as I say, to the very edge of the fair. 
In like manner great quantities of heavy goods, and the hops among the 
rest, are sent from the fair to Lynn by water, and shipped there for the 
Humber, to Hull, York, &c., and for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and by New- 
castle, even to Scotland itself. Now as there is still no planting of hops in 
the north, though a great consumption, and the consumption increasing 
daily, this, says my friend, is one reason why at Stourbridge fair there is so 
great a demand for the hops. He added, that besides this, there were very 
few hops, if aDy worth naming, growing in all the counties even on this side 
Trent, which were above forty miles from London ; those counties depending 
