The Renaissance Faire is a peculiar event that sprouted from a high school history project in Southern California during the early 1960’s. It has grown into a sub-culture that spans across the United States, Canada and Europe. Some events are solid historically based events, others are hysterical spectacles of flesh and fantasy, clinging to a thread of Renaissance history…
Where did the craziness start? What began this trend of folks dressing like peasants and queens beyond the hippie confines of Haite and Ashbury? What gave birth to a worldwide phenomena, one that continues all the way into the 21st-century?
In 1963, at a North Hollywood ranch called Haskell's, Phyllis and Ron Patterson put together the first modern incarnation of a Renaissance themed fair. Together with a local
radio station, this fund-raising event proved so
popular that it has been seen every year since.
May 11th and
12th, 1963, was Renaissance Pleasure Faire's first ever weekend. The Patterson's teamed up with KPFK, a local Los Angeles radio station, to present a fund-raising event
centered around an English Renaissance village and market. Costumed
performers and guests would attend and reenact a faire from the 1500s.
According to the advertisement, a multitude of entertainments and goodies were
to be had at this inaugural event. Needless to say, it was a rousing success.
In the years
since the inaugural event, the Patterson's dream continued on in southern California, spawning a separate northern California faire in 1967, and distinguished within the fair community as "Southern" and "Northern". The original Southern Faire has seen five location changes since its inception, going from Haskell's in 1963
to Rose Ranch in the San Fernando Valley, Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills in
the far West reaches of Los Angeles County in 1965, Glen Helen Park in San
Bernardino County in 1989 and finally landing in Los
Angeles County once again in 2006, opening in its current location, Irwindale. In 1993 it was sold and went corporate. Many of the Pleasure Faire's charming or controversial aspects were eliminated, disappearing under the guise of creating a
"family friendly" environment. Some of the "bawdy" was kept on, but many volunteers who had donated their time free of charge for years were "shown the door" to protect the
money-making aspects of this new fangled and sanitized glimpse of the past.
A few short years removed from William's conquest in 1066, Bartholomew Fair was originally a three-day event to be held on August 23, 24, and 25 of the old calendar ("The Feast of St. Bartholomew" being the 24th), and ran for almost a thousand years, eventually dying quietly under Victoria in 1855. a shell of its former self, reduced to lascivious behavior, carnival and carnal proclivities, and petty crime. When the end came, the St. Bartholomew Fair had grown from a yearly three day weekend to a fourteen day "Spring Break" pleasure festival and was anticipated by both merchant, patron, and criminal alike. There were others, at Southwark and Westminster, but "Bartlemy Fair" is the oldest and most renown. In its 722-year existence it grew from a relatively small market held within the walls of St. Bartholomew Abbey to overflowing and expanding into the open expanse surrounding Smithfield and beyond. Proceeds originally benefited Bartholomew Priory (hence the name and the event's date), but profits never brought "untold" riches. At most they covered a diminutive 10% of the Abbey's yearly expenses.
Of course, other merchandise is recorded, such as leather goods and pewter wares, but to be perfectly
honest, if you wanted it, Bartholomew would have...at one time or another. As the years progressed, everything from Persian rugs to "exotic" ladies could be had for
a price and streets of tent booths named "Rugman's Row" and "Cock
Lane" would get you and your purse to the right locale. Eventually buildings grew up around the Priory, replacing the booths, but the ancient street names from the fair
remained. Merchants and merchandise, particularly cloth, moved into storefronts instead of
tents, and the Age of Enlightenment gobbled up what Medieval and Renaissance London left behind.
Bartholomew Fair can be loosely compared to the modern reconstruction. The Original Renaissance Pleasure Faire, like Barts, was a first. Nothing had been seen like it since 1855 and it spawned a movement that
birthed many other historically themed fair events which in many cases are much
grander and larger. Unfortunately, just like Bartholomew Fair, the Southern California
Faire is in decline after years of changes both in locale and presentation, a shell of its former self, bursting the seams with un-Renaissance fairies, orcs, Merlin, Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Star Wars, steampunk, and 18th-century pirates. Will the show continue on into the future? Yes, but it's going to be more of a Renaissance event in name only, like music television channels that don't show music videos. One thing mirrors both the historical and the modern event. By the 16th-century, Bartholomew Fair was no longer a cloth-centered marketplace. The trappings of the tradition still remained, like the snapping of shears to open the fair, but the merchants and guilds of the cloth and clothing trade had other markets in which to sell. This opened the door for a more carnival atmosphere. Stage entertainments, puppet shows, oddities, freaks and feats filled the vacuum. In this respect, the two events are almost spot-on similar.
As much as
we know about the Bartholomew Fair, what do we know of the founder, Rahere? Almost one-thousand years after the fact, we
know he was well regarded by the King and was reputably an entertainer at Court
with a juggling act. He was well
travelled and had journeyed to the Holy Land and Rome. Upon returning to England he became a
Catholic monk and started St. Bartholomew Priory. He was a man interested in
promoting medicine, the Abbey’s hospital continually operating (no pun
intended) to present day. Finally, for
our intents and purposes, he was the driving force in establishing and mainstreaming,
England's largest, most well-known commercial fair.
While the original fair has disappeared, one remnant remains. St. Bartholomew Hospital, again, founded by Rahere, remains the oldest continuously operated hospital in London. Started in 1126, the hospital was opened nine years before Rahere founded the Bartholomew Fair, and remains today on the site of the original Priory.
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No Author. (n.d.). Saint Bartholomew's Hospital. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Saint-Bartholomews-Hospital
No Author. (2022). Wallace Killing Topped The Bill At Fair. The Society of William Wallace. http://www.thesocietyofwilliamwallace.com/braveheartkilling.htm
Normanus. (n.d.). An Illustrated Account of St. Bartholomew's Priory Church, Smithfield. Bemrose & Sons. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49383/49383-h/49383-h.htm
Patterson, K. (2021). Faire History: The Origins of Pleasure Faire. Faire History: The Origins of Pleasure Faire. https://fairehistory.org/index.html
Webb, E. A. (1921). The Records of St. Bartholomew's Priory and St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield: Volume 1. Oxford University Press. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/st-barts-records/vol1/pp298-317