Downton Cuckoo Fair
2025 Fair – May 2024 Update
Last November the Cuckoo Fair Committee had to take the sad decision to cancel the 2024 Fair. This was due to a number of reasons; certainly, the cost of living crisis had an impact but the main reason was the increasingly complex regulatory and statutory requirements needed to run the largest free event in Wiltshire and the ensuing requirement to have sufficient volunteers to deliver the Fair safely. A number of key personnel had left the Cuckoo Fair Committee and needed to be replaced.
We are delighted to announce that behind the scenes, we have managed to recruit a significant number of new personnel to the Committee. We are indebted to these people coming forward to take on specific roles within the Committee and they will help us enormously in our future planning. The Committee now feel able to go ahead and plan for the next Cuckoo Fair with our new recruits helping us shape our plans for 2025.
We are aware that some local organisations within the village and surrounding areas are planning their own fund-raising activities over what would have been the Cuckoo Fair weekend and we wish them all the success in their aim of raising much needed funds. This is very much in keeping with the aim of the Cuckoo Fair itself, that is to provide an event where local organisations can raise much needed funds. Good luck to you all!
When our announcement was made about the cancellation of the 2024 Cuckoo Fair, it did raise a number of questions from the public. We have condensed this down to a list of FAQ’s. We hope all your queries about this will have been answered.
Once again, we hope that all fundraising activities will be a huge success and can only apologies once again about our decision to cancel this year’s Fair but we are sure that you understand. Rest assured that we are currently planning to run the Cuckoo Fair in 2025!
The Downton Cuckoo Fair committee has been reviewing our experiences and lessons learnt from the recent fairs and also the comments received following the announcement of the cancellation of the 2024 Fair. We’ve reviewed some options and our immediate focus is looking at the options to change the location of the Fair, change the date and change the nature of the Fair. We’re looking to share those options and seek feedback over the Summer. Note all figures mentioned were for the 2023 Fair. Given the inflationary pressures facing UK events they are expected to increase for future fairs.
2025 Fair
Each year we need about £2,000 to cover the Company’s overhead – for costs such as insurance, lock-up rental and professional fees. It’s more if we also provide the Downton village Christmas tree which we’ve been doing from its introduction. Note it cost the council around £800 for the 2023 tree. So having a Fair every other year would require each Fair to yield twice as much surplus to cover two year’s overheads.
When the Fair was re-started SSE sponsored the Fair for a couple of years. Since then local organisations have paid for adverts in the Day Leaflet and before COVID the commercial venues located within the Fair made donations. However, since COVID these donations have tailed off. We would welcome any organisation that would want to sponsor the Fair – we could work with them to develop their publicity for the Fair’s 18,000 visitors and up to 50,000 Facebook users.
The Cuckoo Fair, as a major event, relies extensively on The Event Industry Forum’s Purple Guide. This sets out best practice for events in the UK and as such defines the benchmark as to what local authority event safety advisory groups are looking for. We’d recommend that other events refer to it as a useful source of advice. It helps us ensure that our Event Management Plan is up to date which is a requirement from our insurers and it is also requested by Wiltshire Council for the road closure. Our other main document is the Build Plan and its annexes. This is our aide memoir and captures what needs to go where and when. We only do the fair once a year and we’d forget stuff if it wasn’t written down! Having a smaller fair won’t necessarily reduce the amount of paperwork we need to manage and deliver the Fair.
If the Fair, remaining in the Borough, became a multi-day one an issue would emerge as to how to secure the stalls overnight. Also, would village residents tolerate the roads being closed over an entire weekend? In previous decades the fair used to have events over the Bank Holiday weekend; these were run by villagers. If you want to put an event on and have the energy and time and a band of volunteers to help then do so – there’s nothing stopping you! It would have to be run as an independent event though.
We’d welcome more variety in the types of stalls. If a villager feels strongly about this then they are very welcome to join the committee and to continue our mission to seek out new local stall holders.
Before COVID we had collection buckets at the three main entrances – ie at The Bull, Tannery Bridge and Trafalgar School side gate. This only raised £200.00 from 18,000 visitors! The local organisations who operate the car parks regularly get push back when the car park fee is collected but it’s only £7 per car which could have 4 people in it.
For several years it was £5 – this was split £3 for the car park organiser (Millenium Green, Trafalgar School and the Football Club) and £2 for the Cuckoo Fair. In 2023 it was increased to £7 and it is planned to increase it for the next Fair to £10 (split £6 : £4). Visitors expect card readers but there’s no reliable mobile network / wi-fi capability where the car parks are. Again there’s been push back from visitors as to why they have to pay a car park fee.
The Fair is held in the centre of the village. There are numerous access points eg Tannery Bridge, The Bull, Trafalgar School side entrance, School Rails, Gravel Close, South Lane, rear of Memorial Gardens. We could close some of these off and setup entrance points at the others. However, they’d need to be manned and have wi-fi access setup (see below). It’s unclear how we’d cater for village residents who live in the village but outside the Fair as we doubt they’d want to pay an entrance fee! Also, members of the public could want to walk through the village or visit the co-op. That said 13,000* people at £10 a head would transform the finances. (* excludes the 5,000 who live in Downton).
Currently the Cuckoo Fair is looking to increase the numbers who volunteer to work on the Committee and effectively organise and run the Fair. We have recently welcomed new key personnel to the Team but we are keen to attract more new volunteers. If anyone can give any of your time to help then please email produce@cuckoofair.co.uk.
We very much hope it’s not the end of the Cuckoo Fair. But we need to make sure it has the active support of the village to continue. It must also be of a form that can be easily delivered year in, year out.
We have estimated conservatively that the Fair enables local societies, schools, churches etc to raise at least £40,000 per Fair. We don’t know how much the businesses that operate within the Fair raise. Raising this large amount in one event means that those clubs and societies don’t have to hold many other fund raising events throughout the year. The Cuckoo Fair aims to raise enough funds to cover the costs of staging the Fair and the annual company overheads.
Our initial research showed that this would cost at least £5,000 to provide. That could be covered by charging every stall holder an additional £25! It would also require access to the actual internet to be provided – if anyone on The Borough (ideally near the centre and ends of the Fair) is willing to share their broadband (preferably full fibre) for the day then please contact us via chair@cuckoofair.co.uk.
A major risk to holding the Fair on the Saturday of the first May Bank Holiday is just that – it’s very early in the year. Climate change is making the winter increasingly wet and in recent Fairs we’ve had major uncertainty around whether the car parks would be in operation and the Greens / Memorial
Gardens firm enough for stalls to be setup. The 2023 Fair incurred additional costs of £668 to mitigate ground conditions. A last minute cancellation would impact the Fair’s income by at least £6,000 and also the village organisations, having bought food to be sold, would have no income to
offset their costs.
All of the village organisations – Football club, Trafalgar School, Primary School, Scouts, Millennium Green, need volunteers to run the events so they can raise the funds. Most of them also need volunteers to support their day to day activities.
The Cuckoo Fair would need two large fields – one for the main car park and one for the actual Fair. This proposal is attractive as the Fair would not require the closure of The Borough which we recognise some residents who live there (and some who don’t live there) object to. We could also look at introducing ticketing which would transform the finances and thus the attractions at the Fair.
A possible downside is that venues located in The Borough would lose out on the significantly increased trade they have due to having about 18,000 visitors on their door-step. In a new secure ticketed location we could also consider a multi-day Fair and new attractions / features. Whatever new location was found it would have to be a permanent home.
We regularly benchmark our fees with other comparable fairs. It is hard to make an exact comparison as most are multi-day or offer larger pitches. There’s a risk that increasing fees will only be payable by the more commercial traders. We also want to attract start-up or local firms rather than people who run stalls as a business. We’ve introduced different fees to encourage this but so far there’s been limited take up.
Information
In 2022 the Fair returned after a 3 year break. In 2019 was our fortieth anniversary with a cavalcade of Downton minis and opening by the mayor of Salisbury. In 2018 we welcomed an over 20,000 visitors to our fair, with more than 250 craft, gift, homeware and food and drink stalls on the greens and in marquees along The Borough. The Downton Cuckoo Fair offers fun for all the family including rural craft demonstrations, Punch and Judy, clowns, fairground attractions (no inflatables) in the Memorial Gardens and a produce market in the car park behind the Co-op. The perfect day out in Wiltshire!
We have a wide range of entertainment during the fair including Maypole, Morris & traditional dancers, street entertainers, Downton Brass Band, and a host of live music being performed at key venues throughout the Fair. Click for more information
There is also a wide selection of food and refreshments, along with facilities for the disabled – see our On Site Facilities
Some other events are held over the weekend – see the Weekend Programme NB most of these are held by other organisations so please direct all questions and queries directly to them
There are ample car parks available, run by voluntary organisations and charities, with mini-buses running a Park and Ride service from the Barford Lane car park. To make the most of the your visit to the fair see the ‘Visiting Us’ menu options above.
If you want to add our event to your Listing/What’s On website then please see the ‘‘Fair Use’ Policy by Third Parties eg Listing Websites’ on https://cuckoofair.co.uk/web-site-usage
DOWNTON CUCKOO FAIR CANCELLED FOR 2024
2024 Fair Cancelled
It is with great sadness and disappointment that the Cuckoo Fair Board of Directors announces that the Downton Cuckoo Fair 2024 will not be held.
Whilst we appreciate that this may come as a surprise to many, given the success of the 2023 Fair, having undertaken a review of this year’s Fair, a number of issues have become clear.
The size and increasing popularity of the Fair means that it cannot continue to operate in the same way or with the same small team of existing volunteers. We work tirelessly to make it happen but are a group, like many other volunteer groups, who are getting older. We are sincerely grateful to all those individuals who have stepped forward to help as a result of our recent recruitment drive. However, subsequently things have changed with the departure of some key experienced members of the core team, including our health and safety lead, for reasons of health, work or family commitments.
Similarly, the popular Dorset Knob Throwing festival, which was also a huge event run entirely by volunteers, was cancelled in January 2022 https://www.facebook.com/DorsetKnobThrowing
To put this in context, we work with a lead in time of at least 7 months, so would be starting to plan now for 2024. To understand what is involved behind the scenes, the Team have to produce and update a 70+ page Event Management Plan and a 150+ page Build Plan which is a huge undertaking to plan and then implement. We also have significant and complex logistics and contract work required across a large community of stall holders and various entertainment groups. All of these processes and documents are necessary for us to demonstrate how we meet the increasing regulatory and statutory requirements with the safety of our visitors of paramount concern.
The draft company accounts from the 2022/23 financial year show that we are around the break-even point. As it is un-ticketed event our income does not increase with growing visitor numbers who also have rising expectations. It looks like the ongoing difficult economic situation, the rise in inflation and the cost of living crisis may only get worse for 2024 onwards. With the known significant additional costs for 2024 and additional requests and requirements from those we needed to work with to hold the Fair this year, the Board has concluded that all of these factors combine to make it untenable for 2024.
We are not the only event in this financial situation and you may be aware that the Great Dorset Steam Fair have also been forced to cancel their event for 2024 https://www.gdsf.co.uk/great-dorset-steam-fair-2024-update/
As organisers of what has become a large-scale major event, we are also acutely aware of the increasing risks, including terrorist threats nationally and the potential impact of those on such an un-ticketed event where we cannot easily control the number of visitors.
We have considered a variety of options to run the Fair next year but sadly the reality is that it would be financially and organisationally challenging for us to run the event in 2024 and cancellation is our only viable option.
This has been an extremely difficult decision to make and we recognise that it will no doubt come as a big blow to those local organisations, groups and societies for whom the Fair is the single biggest fundraising opportunity of the year and would like to send our sincere apologies to them. We are also mindful that there will inevitably be financial implications for the Fair’s contractors, traders, local landowners and our village community. We therefore wanted to give the wider community sufficient notice so that they could plan for their 2024 season without the uncertainty that a later decision would entail.
Going forward we really need more positive support from all parts of the community, including a willingness to engage with or be a part of the event team as well as active involvement in running the Fair or contributions from some of those larger village-based businesses operating within the bounds of the Fair, who benefit financially from a well-organised and well-attended Cuckoo Fair. We are grateful for the financial contributions and donations we received in 2023 from St Laurence church, Downton Motor Club, Downton Primary School, Millenium Green, Trafalgar School and Downton Football Club.
We have run the Fair for and with the village for over 40 years and will be taking some time to look at how we can continue to run it as a high-quality, sustainable Fair with strong and positive village involvement for the next 40 years. As a part of this, we will be creating opportunities for people to have their say on the future of the Fair. Downton wouldn’t be Downton without the Cuckoo Fair!
Frequently Asked Questions
2025 Fair
Each year we need about £2,000 to cover the Company’s overhead – for costs such as insurance, lock-up rental and professional fees. It’s more if we also provide the Downton village Christmas tree which we’ve been doing from its introduction. Note it cost the council around £800 for the 2023 tree. So having a Fair every other year would require each Fair to yield twice as much surplus to cover two year’s overheads.
The Cuckoo Fair, as a major event, relies extensively on The Event Industry Forum’s Purple Guide. This sets out best practice for events in the UK and as such defines the benchmark as to what local authority event safety advisory groups are looking for. We’d recommend that other events refer to it as a useful source of advice. It helps us ensure that our Event Management Plan is up to date which is a requirement from our insurers and it is also requested by Wiltshire Council for the road closure. Our other main document is the Build Plan and its annexes. This is our aide memoir and captures what needs to go where and when. We only do the fair once a year and we’d forget stuff if it wasn’t written down! Having a smaller fair won’t necessarily reduce the amount of paperwork we need to manage and deliver the Fair.
When the Fair was re-started SSE sponsored the Fair for a couple of years. Since then local organisations have paid for adverts in the Day Leaflet and before COVID the commercial venues located within the Fair made donations. However, since COVID these donations have tailed off. We would welcome any organisation that would want to sponsor the Fair – we could work with them to develop their publicity for the Fair’s 18,000 visitors and up to 50,000 Facebook users.
If the Fair, remaining in the Borough, became a multi-day one an issue would emerge as to how to secure the stalls overnight. Also, would village residents tolerate the roads being closed over an entire weekend? In previous decades the fair used to have events over the Bank Holiday weekend; these were run by villagers. If you want to put an event on and have the energy and time and a band of volunteers to help then do so – there’s nothing stopping you! It would have to be run as an independent event though.
We’d welcome more variety in the types of stalls. If a villager feels strongly about this then they are very welcome to join the committee and to continue our mission to seek out new local stall holders.
Before COVID we had collection buckets at the three main entrances – ie at The Bull, Tannery Bridge and Trafalgar School side gate. This only raised £200.00 from 18,000 visitors! The local organisations who operate the car parks regularly get push back when the car park fee is collected but it’s only £7 per car which could have 4 people in it.
The Fair is held in the centre of the village. There are numerous access points eg Tannery Bridge, The Bull, Trafalgar School side entrance, School Rails, Gravel Close, South Lane, rear of Memorial Gardens. We could close some of these off and setup entrance points at the others. However, they’d need to be manned and have wi-fi access setup (see below). It’s unclear how we’d cater for village residents who live in the village but outside the Fair as we doubt they’d want to pay an entrance fee! Also, members of the public could want to walk through the village or visit the co-op. That said 13,000* people at £10 a head would transform the finances. (* excludes the 5,000 who live in Downton).
For several years it was £5 – this was split £3 for the car park organiser (Millenium Green, Trafalgar School and the Football Club) and £2 for the Cuckoo Fair. In 2023 it was increased to £7 and it is planned to increase it for the next Fair to £10 (split £6 : £4). Visitors expect card readers but there’s no reliable mobile network / wi-fi capability where the car parks are. Again there’s been push back from visitors as to why they have to pay a car park fee.
Currently the Cuckoo Fair is looking to increase the numbers who volunteer to work on the Committee and effectively organise and run the Fair. We have recently welcomed new key personnel to the Team but we are keen to attract more new volunteers. If anyone can give any of your time to help then please email produce@cuckoofair.co.uk.
We very much hope it’s not the end of the Cuckoo Fair. But we need to make sure it has the active support of the village to continue. It must also be of a form that can be easily delivered year in, year out.
We have estimated conservatively that the Fair enables local societies, schools, churches etc to raise at least £40,000 per Fair. We don’t know how much the businesses that operate within the Fair raise. Raising this large amount in one event means that those clubs and societies don’t have to hold many other fund raising events throughout the year. The Cuckoo Fair aims to raise enough funds to cover the costs of staging the Fair and the annual company overheads.
Our initial research showed that this would cost at least £5,000 to provide. That could be covered by charging every stall holder an additional £25! It would also require access to the actual internet to be provided – if anyone on The Borough (ideally near the centre and ends of the Fair) is willing to share their broadband (preferably full fibre) for the day then please contact us via chair@cuckoofair.co.uk.
A major risk to holding the Fair on the Saturday of the first May Bank Holiday is just that – it’s very early in the year. Climate change is making the winter increasingly wet and in recent Fairs we’ve had major uncertainty around whether the car parks would be in operation and the Greens / Memorial
Gardens firm enough for stalls to be setup. The 2023 Fair incurred additional costs of £668 to mitigate ground conditions. A last minute cancellation would impact the Fair’s income by at least £6,000 and also the village organisations, having bought food to be sold, would have no income to
offset their costs.
All of the village organisations – Football club, Trafalgar School, Primary School, Scouts, Millennium Green, need volunteers to run the events so they can raise the funds. Most of them also need volunteers to support their day to day activities.
The Cuckoo Fair would need two large fields – one for the main car park and one for the actual Fair. This proposal is attractive as the Fair would not require the closure of The Borough which we recognise some residents who live there (and some who don’t live there) object to. We could also look at introducing ticketing which would transform the finances and thus the attractions at the Fair.
A possible downside is that venues located in The Borough would lose out on the significantly increased trade they have due to having about 18,000 visitors on their door-step. In a new secure ticketed location we could also consider a multi-day Fair and new attractions / features. Whatever new location was found it would have to be a permanent home.
We regularly benchmark our fees with other comparable fairs. It is hard to make an exact comparison as most are multi-day or offer larger pitches. There’s a risk that increasing fees will only be payable by the more commercial traders. We also want to attract start-up or local firms rather than people who run stalls as a business. We’ve introduced different fees to encourage this but so far there’s been limited take up.
General
If you are a fair visitor you can still contact your favourite exhibitors and help them with their custom during this difficult time by having a look at the stall holder A-Z directory https://cuckoofair.co.uk/details-of-stallholders-produce-market
General Stall Holder Queries
There is NO wi-fi provided at the Fair. If you are bringing card readers then you’ll need to use your mobile phone to connect to a data network.
As a reminder although the Cuckoo Fair is large it is an un-ticketed event and hence is FREE for visitors at the point of entry. As such we cannot afford to provide wifi for all stalls across the Fair. If we could it be a chargeable extra.
Stall Holder Refunds
We understand that it is not easy to secure a stall at the Cuckoo Fair, which is why we would like to offer all stallholders who had carried over their booking fee from 2020 the chance to roll their booking over again to secure a stall in 2022.
As stated in our Terms and Conditions, we wouldn’t normally offer a refund if the Fair is cancelled, but given such likely difficult times ahead we would like to offer a refund to those who would prefer it, minus a £10 admin fee which will contribute to covering the costs we have incurred already this year.
To request a refund please follow the instructions in the email you have received.
This option will remain available until the end of April 2021
Having cancelled the 2020 fair we unfortunately also had to cancel the 2021 fair. In terms of our funding situation the 2020 financial year incurred costs of £7,400 and the 2021 financial year will incur (fixed) costs of around £3,000. Taken together these have a large impact on the reserves we hold – reserves we need to pay our suppliers in the event of a last minute or emergency cancellation (eg Southampton Boat Show).
The £10 admin fee for each stall holder booking refund is noted in our terms and conditions and will help to cover some of the annual costs like insurance, rental and legal fees, that we have to pay regardless of whether the fair happens.
Our current understanding of government guidance is that unlike other businesses we have no employees (we are entirely volunteer supported), pay no rates, trade only once a year and so don’t qualify for any of the existing support schemes under COVID-19. Like other business who provide outdoor events we are working with trade organisations, eg the Events Industry Forum, to redress that but at the moment it appears we don’t qualify for any grants.
This admin fee money will therefore go towards ensuring that the Fair can happen in 2022 and we thank you for your understanding.
We aim to process refunds within a week of receiving them. Typically refunds are delayed if your bank details are incorrect so please check them especially the name of the account. These checks are being introduced by UK banks to help reduce online payment frauds. There is a phased introduction throughout 2020 – for details see this article from the UK Finance and this article from Which?
The payments have a reference DCF xxx RFND with xxx being your stall holder reference (not location of the your pitch) as printed on the letter from us.