Statutes Fair

The event was originally a hiring fair, with employers giving a symbolic shilling to employees contracted for the following year.

The roads and some car parks and bus stops are closed by the local authority, East Staffordshire Borough Council, from Sunday to Wednesday to facilitate setting up and removal of the rides and street cleaning.

[7] The Statutes Fair is thought to be a relic from the Great Court of the Abbot of Burton, which was held on Michaelmas (29 September).

The local authority (which was then Burton upon Trent County Borough) found it had the power to dissolve the fair, but not to relocate it.

To safeguard the event, the authority provided an assurance that the market square would never be built on and adjusted the redevelopment to allow the fair to continue.

In 1962 a customary half-day holiday which allowed school children in the town to attend the fair was abolished at the instigation of a prominent local head teacher.

[7] In 2005 a committee of East Staffordshire Borough Council considered scrapping or moving the fair, but decided against.