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, etc., 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. These 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.
Enquiring 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:
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