The fair for “runaways” who wanted a different master
The Runaway Fair is the smaller fair on the Monday one week after the Michaelmas Fair in October. Abingdon-on-Thames has a tradition of championing the rights of the common man and this hiring fair was held specifically so that farmworkers and others who had been hired at the earlier Michaelmas Fair, and had found their new master cruel or the conditions intolerable, could quite literally “run away”, return back to the town for another try at finding suitable paid work before the winter set in. To find the exact date of the next Runaway Fair look up October events on the Town Events Calendar.
