All the fun of the (Frost) Fair

As the snow hits London, everyone begins to grumble about how cold it is, and how difficult the commute. Still, at least the Thames hasn’t frozen over! Not this year anyway. It used to though – on a pretty regular basis, which was a bit of a pain as most of London’s trade was conducted by water. The Thames was the city’s lifeblood. Still, rather than get upset about it, Londoners made the most of the enforced break from work, creating impromptu ‘Frost Fairs’ on the frozen river.

The medieval London Bridge slowed the water current down to such a speed that in cold weather it was able to freeze over. The first sign that a frost fair was on its way was the gathering of ice around the legs of the old bridge, this further blocked the current and the freeze spread across the river. The process was helped as the world was in a ‘little ice age’ during the period the fairs lasted – roughly the late 16^th to early nineteenth centuries. The last fair was in 1814.

The first Frost Fairs were little more than an excuse for a community game of football on the ice, but as the fairs became an annual occurrence, they also became a fully blown fairground, with refreshments, souvenirs, sideshows and attractions all forming part of London’s favourite winter day out.

The ferrymen, put out of work by the river’s inconvenient freezing, instead made their money by destroying the ice at the water’s edge, except for ‘approved fair entrances’, where they set up toll booths, charging a small fee to let people onto the ice.

Popular attractions would include whole hog or ox roasts, puppet shows, and stalls selling souvenir certificates. Even royalty got involved, Charles II bought a certificate on the ice, Henry VIII used to travel along the river by sleigh from his palace at Hampton Court to participate and Elizabeth I would take to the ice for shooting practice at the fairs.  

The last ice fair, in February 1814, took an exotic twist when an elephant was led across the ice, just below Blackfriars Bridge. After this, changes in the design of London Bridge, and the end of the Little Ice Age meant the Thames no longer froze, although Bankside hosts a land-based equivalent every year in December to commemorate the events.