Page 55 - All About History - Issue 59-17

London’s Lost Frost Fairs

Ride the
08 draw boat
Fair-goers could ride in boats
fitted with wheels and decorated
with streamers. These could
be blown along using sails or
pulled with ropes by the out-of-
work watermen.

One-horse
09 open sleigh
While Henry VIII travelled from
central London to Greenwich
by sleigh along the frozen river
in 1536, hackney coach drivers
frequently taxied ordinary
Londoners along the ice as well.

Temporary
04 10 taverns
Frost fairs boasted “more
liquor than the fish beneath do
drink”. with stalls selling beer,
11 ale, brandy and gin. Others
established temporary taverns
with benches to sit on.

Beware
11 thin ice
As well as the risk of slipping
over, many Londoners drowned
when the ice cracked. In 1739, a
large sheet collapsed as the river
defrosted, swallowing up several
tents full of people.
12 Ice skating

Before the invention
of iron skates in 1667, London’s
youth tied animal bones to their
feet and reportedly reached
“a velocity equal to the flight
07 of a bird.”

13 Roasting ox

As well as stalls selling
gingerbread, hot pudding pies
and spiced apples, revellers could
warm themselves while watching
03 the spectacles such as the
roasting of a sheep or a whole ox.

12

“THE waTErmEn aLsO
sET uP a numBEr

Of aTTracTiOns TO
LurE cusTOmErs

OnTO THE rivEr”

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