The theory that ‘pack’ is a dialect term for the ‘pacts’ made between farmers and workers at the fair he considers unlikely as that usage is not known locally.
[1] A diary entry written by Richard Bellamy, a local solicitor's articled clerk, describes an evening performance at the town's Swan Inn during the fair of 1794:[3] In the evening about 7 o’clock I went to the Swan and saw Sieur Richards the Showman perform all sorts of conjuration – a great number of people attended this grand exhibition, a large number of gentlemen and ladies, and all Mr Cutler’s schoolboys.
An extensive description of the fair in the early 19th century, when the whole town was taken over by the event, appears in William Hone's Every Day Book of 1826.
The fair is described as[4] a mart for the sale of horses, cows, fat and lean oxen, sheep, lambs, and pigs; cloth, earthenware, onions, wall and hazle nuts, apples, fruit trees, and the usual nick nacks for children, toys, gingerbread, sweetmeats, plums, &c. &c. with drapery, hats, bonnets, caps, ribbands, &c. for the country belles, of whom, when the weather is favourable, a great number is drawn together from the neighbouring villages … [The fair] is annually announced three or four weeks previously by all the little urchins who can procure and blow a cow's horn, parading the streets in the evenings, and sending forth the different tones of their horny bugles, sometimes beating an old saucepan or a drum, to render the sweet sound more delicious, and not unfrequently a whistle-pipe or a fife is added to the band.
Teddy Roe's (or Rowe's) Band, as it is now known, is made up of the youth of the town and makes a great deal of noise with tin cans, horns and whistles.