Wind,
weather and time has reduced Daniel Day’s gravestone to an almost featureless
slab of lichen and moss encrusted rock. All trace of his name has been eroded away but
if you look carefully enough you can just about make out the letters AIRLO, all
that remains of the word Fairlop. Day was buried here in Barking church yard in
1767. Because he had developed a horror of horse drawn transport after being thrown from his
carriage, even in death he refused equine assistance; he was brought by barge
from Wapping, along the Thames and up Barking Creek and then carried the short
distance to St Margaret’s by six journeymen block and pump makers. His coffin
was made from a gigantic branch of the Fairlop Oak, a tree he had made famous
by founding Fairlop Fair.
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| A few heavily weathered letters are the only confirmation that this is Daniel Day#s headstone |
The
Fairlop Oak was an ancient and monstrously huge tree; “at three feet from the ground it measured 36 feet in girth, it was divided
into eleven vast arms, and overspread an area of 300 feet in circuit. This
pride of the forest, which for so many years overshadowed with its verdant
foliage the thousands who crowded under it, and the antiquity of which the
tradition of the country traces to about the ninth century - this gigantic
wonder gave shelter the first Friday in July the well-known Fairlop-fair.” In the 1720’s Daniel Day of Wapping would
ride out to the small estate he owned in Fairlop on the first Friday of July to
collect his rents. According to G Woodgate in a letter to the editor of East
London Observer in 1867 he “invited many
of his friends to a bean feast and bacon, which he doled out to them from the
hollow of the tree. Much bacon and several sacks were consumed this way. In the
course of a few years other parties came, these increasing, booths were
erected, and various articles brought to sale.” The Fair became a great East End institution
with gaming tables, drinking booths, boxing matches, roundabouts, travelling theatres,
and fortune tellers. Daniel Day had a boat built complete with masts and
rigging but constructed to run on wheels and be drawn by a pair of greys in which he rode to the Fair from Wapping via Mile
End, Bow, Stratford and Ilford. Imitators also constructed boats, bigger and
more ornate than the original and drawn by teams of up to six horses. The
return of the boats to Wapping from Hainault on the Friday night became a carnivalesque
occasion with the crowds lining the streets back into London to watch the boats
illuminated by coloured fires and accompanied by a brass band.
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| The once magnificent Fairlop Oak in its final years |
Friday last being
the first Friday in July, the day on which Fairlop fair is usually held, an
immense concourse of people, taking advantage of the fine weather, assembled in
the Mile End Road to “see the boats come in”. The working men “had come forth
in their thousands” and the noble road way of Whitechapel was lined from the
New Road to Bow by half the population of London. The boats did not arrive
until about half past eleven, but considerably before that time the appearance
of a long procession of gaily bedizened costermongers, shouting snatches of the
last new comic song, heralded the approach of the four splendid greys which drew
each boat. Red, blue and green fire was blazing from the window of houses in
all directions, giving a ghostly appearance to the faces the light shone upon,
and resembling for the time miniature conflagrations. We are happy to state
that not a single mishap, as far as we know, occurred to mar the jubilancy of
the occasion.
East London Observer
1867
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| Add caption |
Mr. Day died
October 19. 1767. His remains were carried by water in a coffin made from the
wood of a large branch [of the Fairlop Oak], which broke off just before his
death. He desired to be buried at Barking Church, having been once thrown off
his horse, and at other times overturned in his wheel-carriage, took a dislike to
both, and thus the funeral took its course on the silent highway; six journey
block and pump-makers followed him to whom he bequeathed a new leather apron
and a guinea each. ....The founder of the fair was remarkable for benevolence;
he was never married but had a few innocent eccentricities and was kind to the
children of his sister. He had a female servant, a widow, who had been twenty
eight years with him. As she had in life loved two things in especial; her
wedding ring and her tea, he caused her to be buried with the former on her
finger and a pound of tea in each hand – the latter circumstance being more
remarkable as he himself disliked tea and never used it. He had a few small
aversions but no resentments he was always shocked when he heard of any people
going to law; he gave much away and was continually lending money to deserving
persons, charging no interest for it. (G. Woodgate in the East London Observer)
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| Fairlop Fair in its lusty heyday |
The
Oak outlasted Daniel Day by a mere half century, a mere twinkling of the eye in
the life of a tree. The once magnificent oak was mortally sick by the end of
the century. William Forsyth, gardener to George III was paid a nominal 6d in
1791 to apply curative plasters made from cow-dung, ceiling lime, wood ash,
river sand and burnt bones to the remaining healthy wood after all the dead and
decaying branches had been cut off. A sign was affixed to the tree saying ‘All
good foresters are requested not to hurt this old tree, a plaster having lately
been applied to its wounds.’ Despite the valiant attempt at treatment the oak
continued to die. By 1805 it was a huge hollow shadow of its former self in which
several cattle could take shelter. Picnickers took to sheltering and lighting
fires inside the oak and eventually and inevitably one fire burned out of
control for almost 24 hours, inflicting further irreparable damage to the by
now barely living tree. On Fair day in 1813 an elderly gentleman paid a boy
2/6d to pluck the last green sprig growing on the trees crown. In 1820 a gale
finally brought the now dead oak crashing to the ground. Mr Seabrooke, the
builder currently engaged in building St Pancras new church, purchased some of
the better preserved timber from the oak and used it to construct the pulpit
which still stands in the church.
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