Stourbridge Fair 1725

Duddery (Cloth Fair), Cheapside, Newmarket Road

History of Duddery, Stourbridge Fair

Notes from Honor Ridout’s ‘Cambridge and Stourbridge Fair’:

Beyond the Cheese Row lay the Duddery, the great cloth market … when Defoe knew the market, he saw cloth that had come from Halifax, Wakefield, Leeds and Huddersfield …. other supplies had come from the west Country and Norwich….Defoe was told that £100,000 worth of business was done in the Duddery.

Legend has it that the origins of the Fair itself lay in the cloth trade.