Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 27 September 1929
Wombwell Feast and Feast Week
The Feast has been and gone. Thank heaven it has gone. Residents in the Park Street district have heard sufficient of “Sonny Boy,” “Carolina Moon” and “Happy Days, Lonely Nights” to last them a lifetime.
It is computed (it is not mentioned who took the count) that one organ exhausted its repertoire one thousand two hundred sad forty one times. Lucky are they, who outside the wave length.
Christmas will be with us before the tenants of the Council houses in King’s Road get “She played a Guitar” out of their ears.
Still quoting from lamentations we might recall that the Feast itself is only a very shrunken specimen of what it used to be.
Wombwell Feast was once one of the most important in South Yorkshire and within the memory of those who are not too old to enjoy these things practically every bit of spare ground in the centre of the town was filled with shows, booths and stalls.
The Feast proper used to he assemble in a field near the gas works, with minor fairs in the New Market place, the Horse Shoe yard, the field behind the Post Once and on spare ground in Station Road. In those days Wombwell Feast, as all but the youngest generation will remember, used to attract thousands of people from the surrounding villages.
Nor was the Feast confined to the centre of the town. How many recall those little trips to Hemingfield, Wombwell Main, New Wombwell and other places in the suburbs, the mothers on donkeys and the juveniles perched high on a wagonette.
What is the reason Wombwell Feast has become divested of its former glory? The cause of its decline is not to trace but in all probability the falling ad in enthusiasm for Nile once happy feature of village life is due to a common symptom. During the past twenty years there has been a very great change in popular taste for amusement and something with more than an elementary thrill is now demanded. The provision of cheap amusement in the form of moving pictures has played a big part in killing the village fair, while the see-saws, giant strides, swings and slides with which the Welfare grounds are stocked must have taken the edge off the juvenile appetite for compensation. Anyway Wombwell Feast is nothing more than a shadow of its former self.
Out of curiosity I visited the Feast ground on Friday night. There were not more than a hundred people present. The people behind the stalls and operating the roundabouts looked anything but happy. Some say that local Feasts have been ruined through getting into the hands of monopolies: that the small people have been crushed out, competition has been killed and the public have to “take it or leave it.” There may be something in that. It seemed the public have decided to leave it.
Custom, however, dies hard. In the window of a bank branch in Wombwell last week-end was exhibited the notice: “This branch will be dosed on Monday and Tuesday of next week.” Not a little surprised at seeing this notice a customer of the bank asked what the special occasion was, whereupon the assistant remarked that from time immemorial the branch had closed down on Monday and Tuesday of Wombwell Feast week.
Presumably the custom was originated in order that the assistants might go and do their bit in biffing cocoanuts. Coconuts being a great delicacy much prized by bank clerks. The shopkeepers have not been no faithful to tradition for except in the larger establishments business was as usual in Wombwell during Feast Week. A change in the habits of Wombwell people was indicated by what one saw in High Street on Sunday morning. Quite a score of people were standing ca the edge of the pavement surrounded by trunks, suit cases and parcels. Their Feast week was to be spent at the seaside. For the children’s sake it would be better if the Feasts were celebrated earlier in the year. A holiday from school is best enjoyed when the evenings are long and the days sunny.