Serendipity allowed me to be in the right spot at the right time to catch a troupe of Travellers as they began to setup their Summer Fair on the fields above the Carlton Richard Herrod Centre:

I’ve surveyed my way Eastwards along both Carlton Hill & Foxhill Road until I found the Carlton town-centre. I discovered from the local historian, living within the town’s original Police Station, that St Paul’s Junior school was demolished & the end of Foxhill Road East re-routed so that Tesco could be built (Foxhill currently terminates on Cavendish Road, but originally turned right & terminated on Carlton Hill). Even more astonishing, I discovered from a council worker at the Cemetery that a churchyard next to the Junior School was de-consecrated, also to allow the Tesco to be built. If we consider that the nearby Methodist Church parishioners have an average age in their 70s and are numbered at a score or more, it is clear where the modern spiritual attendance has shifted to (hint: it begins with a ‘T’).

Having reached Carlton town-centre I turned around and am now surveying along Cavendish Road, then Coningswath Road + all roads between those & the previous patch. Thousands & thousands of houses & lots of interesting discoveries.

To join the large list of House Art listed at the bottom of a previous post here is yet another Leaded-Lights front door. The lady that let me photo this one (the door is recessed and, unfortunately, I had to get very close for my mobile’s photo-circuitry to register it correctly - there is much more of it to see) proudly boasted that she had designed it; and very fine it looks, too:

Now back to the fair. Quite a few folks may know that Nottingham boasts of having the largest fair in Britain (held during the Autumn months). That happens to be wrong - as a Hull-born man, and as a much younger man having spent some of my time selling trinkets from a bench at that fair, I know that Hull Fair is much larger than Nottingham Goose Fair. It just doesn’t have as good a name.

In general, the fairground folks rest during the summer. However, there are enough that need to eat during the summer, so Summer Fairs are a feature throughout England.

That entire vast patch of sports-fields & tennis courts splits the lands to north & south. I took my opportunity on Monday 25 July to return home by walking one of the footpaths across the field. A sign near the start says “land is prone to flooding” (there is an entire diary entry devoted to the nearby Flood Lagoon). So, if you plan to visit the fair & it starts raining, then probably best to take some thigh-high waders with you!