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Travelling amusement fair in Nottingham, England

The Nottingham Goose Fair is an annual travelling funfair held at the Forest Recreation Ground in Nottingham, England, during the first week of October. Largely provided by travelling Showmen, it is one of three established fairs in the United Kingdom to carry the name, the others being the smaller Goosey Fair in Tavistock, Devon, and the even smaller Michaelmas Goose Fayre in Colyford, East Devon. In recent years, there have been more than 400,000 visitors to Nottingham's fair annually. Now known for its fairground rides and attractions, Goose Fair started as a livestock and trade event, with a reputation for its excellent cheese. The name "Goose Fair" is derived from the thousands of geese that were driven from the Lincolnshire fens in the East of England to be sold in Nottingham at the fair each year. although it is thought that a fair was already established in the city before then. Goose Fair was cancelled in 1646 after an outbreak of the bubonic plague, and again during the two World Wars of the 20th century. For 2022, as of March, negotiations were underway to extend the fair's normal five day duration to ten days.

It is not known exactly how long a fair has existed in Nottingham, but it has certainly been around for many centuries and may date back more than a thousand years. The earliest reference to a "St Mathew's Fair" in Nottingham, held on 21 September, comes from Saxon times. It is also known that the Danes had a settlement in Nottingham, and they most likely established a market, which may have included a primitive fair. where the fair was held annually for hundreds of years. The fair resumed on its traditional date of the first Thursday in October in 1945. The length of the fair has varied over the years; originally eight days long, the fair was shortened to three days in the late 19th century, which is about a mile north of Nottingham city centre. It takes over all of the grassy area of the recreation ground as well as half of the car park. A large area adjacent to the fairground is used as a temporary encampment for the show travellers to inhabit for the duration of the fair. Special road systems take effect during the Goose Fair to allow the additional traffic to flow more easily. To prevent traffic congestion, parking is restricted in the local area, and no loading is allowed on local streets. The use of public transport is encouraged; there are regular trams to the Forest Recreation Ground and buses to the nearby Mansfield Road and Sherwood Rise. The official countdown to Goose Fair is marked by the appearance of "Goosey", the fair's giant goose mascot. In the run up to the fair, the 2 metre high fibreglass and timber statue is installed on a roundabout on Mansfield Road, adjacent to the Forest Recreation Ground. This annual tradition started in the 1960s. The fair is officially opened each year with a ceremonial ringing of a pair of silver bells by the Lord Mayor of Nottingham. The Cinema Museum holds film of the Fair from 1948. HM0366. Goose Fair has opened for four days over most of its recent history, but it was permanently extended from four to five days in 2009. Some of the top rides from the Goose Fair have therefore to travel directly from Nottingham to Hull, not opening at Hull until around the fourth day of the fair. The fair has seldom been affected by violence. However, in 2004, 14 year old Danielle Beccan was murdered near her home in St. Ann's, when a gang from a rival district opened fire from their car on a group of children walking home from the fair. Goose Fair was not held in 2020 due to the COVID 19 pandemic; it was officially cancelled on 21 August 2020 amidst ongoing safety concerns. It was cancelled again in 2021 because of "ongoing concerns and uncertainty" over COVID 19 and the fact that less than half of Nottingham's residents had been fully vaccinated. Rides for the more adventurous fair goers include Speed XXL, a 3g spinning pendulum ride; XLR8, a 4g spinning drum ride; the Wild Mouse, a high speed roller coaster with spinning carts; and the Reverse Bungee, an elasticated vertical catapult. and a huge swinging/rotating disc ride called the Giant Frisbee was introduced the same year. The many family attractions include traditional bumper cars, helter skelters, funhouses, ghost trains, teacups and waltzers. Another artist from Nottingham, Arthur Spooner, painted The Goose Fair, Nottingham in 1926. The painting was sold at Christie's in 2004 for over £200,000 and is also now displayed at Nottingham Castle. While living in London between 1908 and 1912, the writer D. H. Lawrence would return home to Nottingham every year to visit the Goose Fair. In 1910, he wrote a short story called "Goose Fair", which first appeared in The English Review in February 1910 and was included in his collection, The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, in 1914. In the novel Goose Fair, Cecil Roberts presents a derisive portrayal of the fair: "Every first Thursday in October, following the custom of centuries, the good people of the city whose Sheriff was so soundly abused by Robin Hood, take leave of their senses." Originally published in the United States in 1928, the novel was also published in England in the same year with the title David and Diana, the names of the book's main characters. English Journey by J. B. Priestley, published in 1934, chronicles the author's travels around England the previous year. It contains a particularly scathing account of his visit to Goose Fair, which he describes as a "crushing mass of gaping and sweating humanity" "contrived to attract the largest number of pennies in the shortest possible time." Goose Fair has been used in television programmes, as well as in films such as The Woman for Joe (1955), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Weekend (2011). The short story "Noah's Ark", written by Alan Sillitoe in 1991, is set in Nottingham's Goose Fair. and the fair features in "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" by the same author

Goose Fair Night is a 2016 collection of poems written by Kathy Pimlott, which contains the author's reflections on places in and around Nottingham, including the annual Goose Fair.