Place Name
Named after the summer celebrations held on the eve of St James’s Day (May 1st, the feast of St James the Less) in the 17th and 18thCenturies on Brook Field (written as Great Brooke field in 1650) beside the River Tyburn. The earliest record of it is in 1560, although it is possible that it dates back much further than this to the 13thCentury. It continued – with concerted, and occasionally successful, efforts to shut it down – until the mid-18thCentury. Throughout this period the area was still open land and used as a goods and cattle market. The field later gave its name to nearby Brook Street. Writing on the Mayfair and St James’s Association website, David Herbert, explains: “The fair enjoyed its heyday in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when its reputation attracted people from far and wide. It was frequented by people from all levels of society including the nobility and gentry. It was a rowdy event, with showmen, tricksters, gamblers and prostitutes jostling with each other to entice the throngs of customers. Frequent quarrels and drunken brawls added to the riotous atmosphere. Attempts were made to put an end to the fair in 1664, as it was ‘considered to tend rather to the advantage of looseness and irregularity than to the substantial promotion of any good, common and beneficial to the people’. However, the popularity of the fair made it difficult to suppress. Later on during that century, in 1688, Royal permission was granted for a cattle market to be held in Brookfield (so called because the Tyburn stream ran through it) in the vicinity of modern-day Curzon Street. This was where the old St James’s Fair had taken place and within a few years, the market had become an excuse to revive the old custom. The May Fair, as it became known, extended to last throughout the first two weeks in May.” One resident in nearby Piccadilly was moved to write during the reign of Queen Anne: “Can any rational man imagine that Her Majesty would permit so much lewdness as is committed at May Fair, for so many days together, so near to her royal palace, if she knew anything of the matter.” The event was reportedly closed down in 1709, probably because building work had begun five years earlier. Indeed, Tatler reported: “May Fair is utterly abolished, and we hear that Mr Pinkethman has removed his ingenious company of strollers to Greenwich.” But reports of its end had been greatly exaggerated Herbert adds: “Once again the suppression proved ineffectual and the fair continued for decades to come. If anything, it was made more permanent by the building of a two-storey market-house in 1738. During the fortnight when the cattle market was replaced by the fair, the butchers’ stalls on the ground floor made way for the show-men’s booths and the upper storey was converted into a theatre… The annual fair was finally brought to an end in 1764. The Earl of Coventry had purchased a house in Piccadilly, the grounds of which backed onto the land where the fair was held. He found the noise and disturbance intolerable and it was largely through his personal influence that the fair was eventually brought to an end.”
