#frost fair

[riskofrot]

Do you ever fall a little bit in love with your town by rounding the corner and seeing something magical?

Like today, I was out walking to get a couple minor groceries, and I turned and glanced towards the lake and saw several massive kites above the rooftops separating me from the shoreline. Curious, I turned and walked to the lake only to see several more kites launch. Some were huge! One looked like a blue whale! It’s deep winter and the whole lake is frozen, and I’d stumbled into a small frost fair out on the ice. I walked several hundred feet out onto the lake, over towards the kite flyers and the igloo constructed of ice blocks. One quartet of flyers were guiding their kites in formation, making pinwheels, starbursts, and following each other in arcing paths. I got to stand on the lake looking back at the homes and buildings along the shore, rainbow kites overhead, and snow-patched ice all around me, feeling a bit like I’d stepped into a fairy tale.

[1five1two]

'Frost Fair on the Thames, with Old London Bridge in the distance'. Unknown artist. 1684.

[lho-archive]

Lex takes Berta to the frost fair. She enjoys all the sights of the fair.

Drawn 17/12/21

[lho-archive]

Lex takes Berta to the frost fair. The phoenix is a sight, even if it's just a jiggumbob.

Drawn 17/12/21

[lho-archive]

Lex takes Berta to the frost fair. Berta is excited to see a chariot on three wheels propelled by a screw, Lex isn't.

Drawn 17/12/21

[lho-archive]

Lex takes Berta to the frost fair. She's excited to see the bears.

Drawn 15/12/21

[findlight]

A View of the Frost Fair on the Thames, February 1814.

“The Year 1814 will be long remembered for the severe frosts and heavy falls of snow with which it commenced, and by which the rivers were rendered innavigable, and the public roads for several days impassable. At the beginning of February the river was completely blocked up with ice, between London and Blackfriars Bridge, where a fair was kept, 3 or 4 days, with booths, swings, skittles, presses printing tickets in commemoration, &c &c”

Woodcut, published in 1814 by T. Batchelor.

[julie-slamdrews]

Back in November, something reminded me that the Thames used to freeze in the winter. Of course, being deeply immersed in the Harlots fandom by this point, my next thought was ‘I wonder if that still happened in the eighteenth century.’ When I found out it did I knew I wanted to write about it, but turning that thought into an idea and the idea into a piece of writing has proved harder than I expected. And so I begrudgingly present to you a series of frost fair drabbles, set around 10 years pre-canon (when there wasn’t a documented frost fair, but the two that were documented fall just either side of when I can plausibly write them into canon so I’m using artistic licence). 

Accompanying moodboard by the incredible @selkiewife who I love and hate in equal measure for making me write the thing. 

Lucy

“It’s frozen!” Lucy leans over the railing to stare in wonder at the river below. “Look, Charlotte!”

Charlotte, twelve years old now and apparently far too grand to care about frozen rivers, barely spares it a glance as she catches Lucy’s gloved hand in her own and tugs her away.

“It freezes every year,” she tells her sister in a bored tone. “It’ll be water again by the end of the week.”

But Charlotte is wrong. A blanket of snow settles on the frozen river, compacts and is covered again, and then the first tents appear. It’s frost fair time.