Corby, the ‘new’ town in Northamptonshire, is full of Scottish people, most of them speaking with a strong Glaswegian accent. Wasn't always so. Just after the war, Corby was a minuscule village inhabited by farm labourers and their broods and the talk was mostly of turnips. Truth to tell, there wasn’t much else to talk about in Corby.
What brought about the Scottish invasion, then? Steel.
Most of that part of Northamptonshire held vast deposits of iron ore. Also, most of that part of the county was owned by the Duke of Buccleuch who, though not short of a bob or two, was by no means averse to owning a few bob more. So, when the mining consortia approached him he could hardly wait to sign on the dotted; and very soon the whole region was converted into a lunar landscape as walking draglines tore chunks out by the ten-ton shovelfuls. What more natural, then, than the Duke should lease more land on which to build a vast complex of steelworks. Great. The raw material was there, the means of converting it to steel were there. But who would do the converting? No problem. Thousands of unemployed Scottish steelworkers could be relocated. And they were. And almost overnight, Corby became a suburb of Glasgow and the pubs had to lay in unheard quantities of whisky and Kettering Magistrates' Court, pitifully inadequate to cope with all the violent crime, had, in effect, to be relocated to Corby.
But long before all this happened, when Corby was still a dot on the map, the village had one solitary claim to distinction. That was its Pole Fair. Can’t tell you what the 'Pole' implied, because that was never explained. What set Corby’s Pole Fair apart from all other Fairs was the fact that it occurred only once every 20 years. That was never explained, either. It just was.
The last time it was to have been held was in 1941, but there was neither inclination nor possibility of that taking place in one of the darkest years of the war. So, they agreed to postpone it until as soon after the war as possible. As it turned out, that was 1947 - at which time My Friend Harry was News Editor of the Kettering Evening Telegraph. He and Bill Joy, the Editor, formerly of the Daily Mail, agreed that something special was called for.
By tradition, the Pole Fair started at 5 a.m. with halberdiers parading through the streets of the village and warning all females that they could not decline to grant a kiss to any who demanded it. Then there’d be an interim period until 10 o’clock, after which the rest of the day would be given over to all the traditional activities of a country fair, including climbing a greasy pole and catching a greasy pig, and come to an end with a dance in the village hall and a firework display on the village green.
My Friend Harry decided to bring out a special noon edition of the Telegraph carrying pictures taken between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. He hired a room at the local pub as an editorial base, had a phone extension laid on and hired the use of the pub’s cellar as a makeshift darkroom for the historic pictures to be developed and printed and rushed by car back to Kettering.
It all worked a treat. Old Man Cragg, the photographer, staggered around the village at 5 o’clock with his immense Speed Graphic camera and the great leather case full of slides loaded with glass quarter-plates. He took pictures galore, for the plan was to fill at least four pages with pictures-and preferably six. Harry and a reporter named Tony Ireson toured the village gathering stories and news items and interviews and rushed back to the pub to dictate the copy to the copytakers in Kettering. When the halberdiers had finished their tour and the village went back to bed to prepare for the joys to come, Harry and Tony rested in the room at the pub, poured tea from their flasks and got to work on the sandwiches their wives had prepared for them.
Back at Kettering, a skeleton staff of sub-editors, compositors, proof readers, stereo workers and machine men were gearing themselves to do all that was necessary to bring out something unique, an on-the-spot pictorial account of the launch of a Pole Fair.
Bert Horridge, in his thatched cottage in Corby, did deign to leave his bed to look down as the halberdiers trumpeted their way along his dusty road, but then shut his window and went back to bed, making sure that his alarm clock was set for 6 a.m. His day, too, was special.
At six o’clock he dressed, went to the scullery to wash and shave and, being a single man, to cook himself a substantial breakfast of eggs and bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes, with bread and marmalade and a mug of tea to follow. A quick trip out to the back, his cap set squarely on his head, and he was ready for the off.
He was a little too late to enjoy the dawn chorus from the woods lining the road, but the thrushes and blackbirds were singing lustily nevertheless and he even detected the twittering of a robin as he rounded the bend in the lane and the pub hove in sight. He passed the time of day with the milkman in his horse-drawn float, but said he couldn’t stop for a chat about the Fair. Busy.
Harry heard Old Man Cragg’s cry of anguish and rushed down to see what was bugging the silly old fool now. This time, Craggy had plenty to howl about.
Nobody had mentioned to My Friend Harry that the pub had been granted a licence extension from seven o’clock that morning. The landlord had mentioned it to Bert Horridge, though, for Bert was his cellarman and, being conscientious, Bert had turned up early to make sure all was ready in the cellar when the doors were flung open and the early drinkers surged in.
So, he had opened the door of the cellar, switched on the light and ...
And destroyed every single picture Old Man Cragg had taken. And it would be 20 years before similar pictures could be taken.
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