On Sunday, August 9th, Marlborough lost one of its best-known personalities. Although he had never lived here, he was part of the stonework. He even spent his honeymoon here. ‘We regard Marlborough as our second home’, he used to say and, certainly, as a generous contributor to local charities, he would live up to that claim in a very practical way.
Many people enjoy that lovely moment when the streets are closed for the Mop Fair and there’s a brief moment of tranquillity as the High Street becomes traffic-free. That’s when Billy Whitelegg would be pacing the street, sorting out the ‘ground’ for the impending arrival of the fair. You’d be getting on a bit if you recalled the first of his 70 or more years of consecutive appearances at the Mop Fairs. That was when he was 21 and had just finished National Service. Billy was been a familiar figure on West Country fairgrounds for three generations. Not many people see a blue plaque unveiled to them in their lifetimes, but Billy did. Some seven years ago, we put one up to him outside the Conservative Club in Marlborough. Amongst his fellow-showmen, the Club was known as “Billy’s Office”. During the Marlborough Mops, he could sit in there and keep an eye on his ‘Twister’ roundabout, parked right outside the front door. The plaque was lost when the Club closed, but was recovered by Marlborough’s intrepid Town Clerk. It has now been placed where it really belongs – in pride of place on the Town Hall.
Like most in the fairground business, Billy came from a line of showmen. Few other trades or professions are handed down from one generation to another in this way. The fairground business is a family business in the fullest sense of the word. Everyone is involved and has a role in the fair from an early age. It was in this world that Billy grew up. At age 10, he learnt how to shoot a .22 rifle with live ammunition on his grandfather’s shooting gallery. ‘It’s been hard work’, he said in reflecting on his life, ‘though we were brought up to get used to that.’
Such are the demands of life on the road that few marry outside the circle. Until recently, divorce was virtually unknown and, even now, it is a rarity, as is bankruptcy
and crime. No showman’s child has ever been known to be taken into care. Billy and his dear wife Louise (always Louie) tick all the boxes on this one. Louie also comes from a long-established fairground family – Jennings of Devizes. Like Billy she came early to the business. A contemporary remembers her at Devizes Fair, ‘a beautiful girl, with long dark hair with her own little roundabout for children’. On National Service, Billy gained his sergeant’s stripes – a rare achievement for a squaddie. Louie had known him since she was 15. ‘I grabbed him’, she says, but, without a doubt he’d have been out of his mind if he hadn’t grabbed her, but whoever grabbed who, there’s no doubt that it worked. They were married for 60 years and have more than 20 descendents, all involved in the fairground business.
The main collective organisation of travelling show people is the Showmen’s Guild, founded as long ago as 1889 to ensure the rights of ‘van dwellers’. Its membership consists of some 4,500 heads of family. From 1983 to 1985, Billy was the Guild’s National President, a role that took him to the official openings of all the great fairs in the length and breadth of the land – the Kirkcaldy Links Market, Newcastle Hoppings, Bridgewater, Nottingham Goose, Hull and Oxford St. Giles Fairs, Stratford-upon-Avon Mop and, yes, Marlborough Mop and Salisbury Charter Fair. He was always keen that showmen should play a full part in the life of the nation and not be a people apart. To that effect, until infirmity slowed him down he would always participate in the Remembrance Day Parade in Whitehall in personal commemoration of the showmen who had given their lives in conflict.
Billy is survived by Louie, by his daughter, Gina Farrell, whose husband, Charles, succeeded her father as Marlborough’s “Mop Master”, his daughter Louise, wife of showman, Charlton Harris and his son, Joey who, like all his other descendants, is still in the business!
Nick Fogg
Mobile network problems – at least the Red Telephone Box still works
