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A leper chapel's fair that grew into Europe's greatest market.
Check opening times
The Leper Chapel grounds on Newmarket Road are always open, but the chapel is usually locked and opens only for events and open days. The free Stourbridge Medieval Fair re-enactment was held on 6 September 2025, noon to 4.30pm, with no parking at the chapel.
That small Norman chapel by Newmarket Road once launched the biggest fair in Europe, perhaps the Vanity Fair of Pilgrim's Progress.
In 1199 King John allowed the leper chapel at Steresbrigge, outside Cambridge, to hold a fair to support its lepers. Held on Stourbridge Common by the Cam, it grew into one of the largest fairs in Europe, selling cloth, fish, spices and horses for weeks each autumn, and town and university quarrelled for centuries over who controlled it. Tradition says it inspired the Vanity Fair of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The great fair dwindled away, but the little Norman chapel survives, and each September a medieval fair re-enactment is held beside it, opening with the traditional proclamation.