extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY DOWN Hiring in Ballynahinch took place in the Market Square; also in Railway Street and in later years beside the war memorial, the crowd often spilling over into other streets. The hirelings were easy to pick out with their shabby clothes and well-worn boots. Farmers on the other hand often wore britches, leggings, a collar-less shirt fastened at the neck with a stud, long overcoat and soft felt or hard hat. By mid-afternoon farmers were on their way home. The atmosphere became noisier and jollier as the evening wore on. Drunkenness and fights were common. A newspaper report of 1938 headed ‘Court Cases in Ballynahinch’ tells of two brothers from Annsborough who were charged with being drunk in charge of a horse and cart on their way home from the fair. A police sergeant heard the horse coming at an unusually fast rate. He discovered the driver leaning in a recumbent position over the reins and paying no attention whatsoever to the horse on the road. Another occupant in the cart was lying back with his legs dangling over the tailboard. The driver said he had had four half-uns (hot) that day. He wanted a drop more when he reached the Barrack. He was fined forty shillings and his brother was fined fifteen shillings. There were also prosecutions that day for illegal betting, selling sausages containing too much preservative, poor school attendance and drinking meths. The meths drinker denied the charges stating that he had bought the meths to rub on a cow’s udder. He had got drunk he said on a five naggin bottle of wine!       Killinchy had one of the smaller fairs. Those held in 1837 were described as being ‘badly attended and scarcely any cattle bought or sold.’ The dates on which they were held coincided with the quarterly and half-yearly hiring fairs so they may originally have been held for that purpose. Long ago the people of Killinchy burnt kelp and sent it to Liverpool where it sold at three to nine pounds a ton depending on quality. Most of the produce of the area however, including fish, wheat and oats, was marketed in Belfast. Oysters were sent to Lisburn where they fetched one shilling and sixpence a hundred-weight. Killinchy’s fairs had almost died out by the end of the nineteenth century.       Not so in Saintfield, which always had good fairs. The town started off with six increasing to twelve throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. On the last Wednesday of every month blue and orange painted carts containing litters of pigs arrived into the town and parked, up-ended, at the bottom end of the wide main street. The pigs were displayed in a box beside the cart. Horses were sold at the upper end and were put through their paces in the roadway. In its heyday (at the turn of the twentieth century) buyers came from the United Kingdom, France and Austria in the knowledge that they could buy a good horse in Saintfield. Cattle and sheep were bought and sold around the corner on the fair green. Hiring took place at the fair green too. Shops were kept busy especially that of Minnis Bros. which was ideally situated about half-way along the main street. Frank Minnis sold feeding stuffs, groceries, hardware and other household items of interest to farmers and their wives. In 1886 Frank was also performing the duties of postmaster. At one time there was a horse thresher and corn mill behind the shop premises offering yet another service to the farming community.       Several blacksmiths, drapers, grocers, butchers, coal merchants and nine spirit retailers made up the bulk of the other businesses in the town, together with a saddler, an auctioneer, a boot and leather merchant, a hotel keeper, a watchmaker and two newsagents. At M.M. Priestley & Sons you could have bought anything from a hat to a garden shed or artificial manure. If you needed the services of an undertaker he could have supplied you with a one, two or four horse hearse; an oak, birch or black coffin, a shoulder scarf, mourning band, ribbons and gloves. The R.I.C. Barracks was staffed by Sergeant Loftus and four constables. Three physicians cared for the sick while five clergymen and a priest looked after the souls of the folk in the surrounding countryside – together with the 769 villagers counted in the census of 1881.       Many other villages enjoyed success too. Most had fairs and markets at some stage over the years. It is likely that hiring took place at some of them. The more important ones were held at Dromara and Hillsborough – also in the west of the county at Moira, Gilford, Scarva and Loughbrickland. Most of these had charters from an early date. Watson’s Almanac records that Scarva and Loughbrickland held fairs in 1745. Hillsborough and Dromara are not mentioned although Moyses Hill had been granted permission to hold fairs in these places more than a century before. His charter allowed him to have a market every Wednesday in Hillsborough and a monthly fair from March until November; also a fair at Annesbury (Dromara), with tolls and profits. He was to appoint a corporation in Hillsborough consisting of a sovereign and twelve burgesses and freemen. The corporation was to have power to appoint as many freemen as it thought proper, taking five shillings from each. The aforementioned burgesses and freemen had permission to make and sell wine without licence and the liberty to tan leather within the borough. The territory mentioned was formerly owned by the Magennis family but forfeited by them after their part in the rebellion of 1641. Loss of territory was to be expected in such circumstances.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extracts regarding County Armagh: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 Forthcoming extracts regarding County Down: Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 |

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