Strawberry Fayre

 

My dad and I went to a Strawberry fayre at Ely Place after work the other day. We passed an advertisement for it on Monday, so decided to pay it a visit. St Etheldreda’s church holds such a Fayre as a charity fundraiser annually, so if I am completely honest, I would have expected them to have perfected it by now. In actual fact, we were both a little disappointed. For a strawberry fayre, they seemed to be somewhat lacking in strawberries. I was expecting strawberry themed everything: bunting, cider, cakes etc, but the only thing was strawberries and cream. It was still a lovely idea, and on further research we discovered that Ely Place is a bit of a strange part of London as the area goes. It is technically a part of Cambridgeshire as it is the former residence of the Bishops of Ely and therefore is not actually London, despite being surrounded by the city!

Timeout has its own description of the location: “Ely Place remains quite literally a law unto itself, and long may it continue to do so. ‘Many times we’ve had robbers run in here from Hatton Garden,’ Wright recalls fondly. ‘They know the City police don’t have the right to follow them. It’s still the same today: the police just have to seal all the exits and ring the Cambridgeshire force, then wait around ‘till they jump in their cars and get down here’”

 

I am glad we went as otherwise we wouldn’t have known what it was like, and would have been constantly wanting to visit. Despite being a little disappointing, it is still a fabulous tradition and if they had more of a theme, it would have been wonderful. Hopefully it’s a tradition which will carry on for many more years.

 

xx