Over Friday, and the weekend the Craft Fair returned to the Abbey Buildings. The company that organised the event until 2015 had ceased trading. They use to run a larger event for two weeks. The Friends of Abingdon have brought back the Craft Fair focusing more on traditional crafts in 2017 for a shorter period.
There were demonstrations.
The ancient rooms make a great backdrop for the traditional crafts.
The Long Gallery was carpeted this year and felt warmer.
The undercroft was cosy.
Hopefully stall holders did well out of the event and it will be back next year.
I appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to organise this but I did feel that the £6 each entrance fee was not really worth the money. There did seem to be a lot of duplication in what the stalls offered. Unless I missed something, there were no food stalls (apart from a guy selling sausages) compared to previous years when there was cheese, honey, wines, chocolates etc. We were in and out in 15 minutes. Hopefully next time there will be a bit more variety.
At least your comment didn’t get deleted!? I agree that the entrance fee was too high and we didn’t go in because of that reason. We just wanted to browse, not take part and maybe buy something nice for our money. All for supporting the upkeep of the old buildings but £12 for 2 people, sorry not going to happen and I heard a number of other people saying the same and walking away.
Somewhat reluctantly paid the £6 entrance fee, only to find that a number of the stalls, while very nice, can be found for free at regular events on the market place. I realise that, this year, the money goes towards the upkeep of the buildings, but I understand the stalls pay quite a lot to be there, so £6 entrance is far too high. Will not return at that price.
The Craft Fair organisers welcome any feedback on the event and are already using it to start planning for next year. We can be reached via either the Abingdon Traditional Craft Fair website or via the Friends of Abingdon.
Just a bit of background explanation: the previous organisers pulled out because they couldn’t make enough money, so there were clearly lessons to be learned from that! We did not have access to their list of exhibitors so could not contact them to invite them back. We therefore decided to look for high-quality craft workers who made their products themselves; we also decided that since it was a new venture we would confine ourselves to the Abbey Buildings, rather than incurring the costs of marquees – hence the smaller size. The entry price included not just the chance to buy, but also craft workers demonstrating their skills and vouchers to spend in town.
We too hope that next year’s show will be bigger and with more variety: if there is any particular trade that people would like us to contact, please let us know. And finally, lots of people said we should have a cafe – we will see what we can do!
Confused dot com here, who are the Friends of Abingdon?
Are they the same people why scuppered the sale of Old Abbey House by campaigning to register it as a community building? If so little wonder they made such a poor job of running this event, to say they didn’t have a list of previous exhibitors is rather naive, didn’t any of them have a program from last year ?
The entrance fee was why we did not attend as a family, although we normally do. That’s more than we might spend on actual items for a rather short event (plus this year was likely to be smaller). Disappointing.
A programme from previous years or a bit of internet sleuthing could have found more exhibitors fairly easily.