As someone who struggled with imposter syndrome coming to Cambridge, I did not expect to feel at home at a May Ball. The idea of a multi-hundred-pound, champagne-fuelled, all-night long party in a Cambridge College was a alien form of entertainment from my native Teesside nights out. But, when the black tie, Georgian architecture, and crappy tribute bands are discarded, and the May Ball is stripped to its skeletal form, it takes on the form of a familiar North Eastern and – to my surprise – Cantabrigian staple: the travelling funfair.
Cambridge’s history of funfairs predates our ancient University. Midsummer fair – the oldest and grandest of Cambridge’s fairs – traces its roots to medieval celebrations of Midsummer. A report by local history group Friends of Midsummer Common details how a patch of grass known as “green croft” was regularly “used for semi-pagan festivities around the wellhead once a year on Midsummer Eve”. The fair became a more formal event in 1211, when King John granted the fair a formal charter to celebrate the Christian feast of Saint Ethelreda, granting it to the local Priory to make the most of potential tax income. Around two years prior, a group of Scholars fleeing violence from Oxford townsfolk congregated at the ancient Roman trading post of Cambridge for the purpose of study, the earliest record of the town’s University.
Despite their historic closeness, the two institutions held great animosity for centuries to come. An article on the history of Midsummer Fair by Enid Porter – a former curator of the Cambridge & County Folk Museum– details how power struggles between Town and Gown plagued the fair. Even though the council had acquired the rights to the fair, University Proctors retained the “privilege” to search for “beggars, vagabonds, and lewd women and to imprison or banish them,” causing great upset to the fair community. The latter of that unscholarly group were likely subjected to imprisonment in the University’s spinning house – a private prison where local women suspected by Proctors of having a corrupting influence on students were detained.
Porter acknowledges some positive intersections between the University and fair; the awarding of degrees and the fair overlapped in the 1830s, leading members of the University to “mingle with humbler crowds at the fairground” in “brightly-coloured gold-embroidered gowns,” with some even indulging in “raffles for pictures, china, and millinery”. The University even proclaimed the opening of the fair twice – despite the council jealously guarding this traditional right – with officials drinking “egg flip and sack [eggnog and sherry] in the senate house” to prepare themselves to face the townsfolk. However, the fair was treated with disdain by University officials for the most part, who saw its frivolities as posing a threat to educational ideals, and often landed themselves in hot water for offending members of the Council organising the event.
“the fair was treated with disdain by University officials for the most part”
The scholarly partition between the Fair and University began to show cracks late in the 20th Century, in the wake of a shift in student attitudes toward traditional May Balls. Balls began as a long night of drinking in local pubs to celebrate rowing clubs’ success at May Bumps, with the First and Third Trinity Boat Club holding the earliest ‘ball’ (read: pub crawl) in 1838. The first formal Ball on College grounds was held in Trinity in 1866, taking its name after the boat club. However, early May Balls were strictly formal affairs: white tie, champagne, classical orchestras, and a waltz were to be expected.
The Cambridgeshire Collection – a set of local archives – depicts balls of the early 1900s as “lavishly illuminated and decorated” affairs with “21 dances on the programme and three supper dances” scheduled – a far cry from today’s world of headliners and silent discos. This continued through the 1930s and 40s, with “lantern lit cloisters” and “fairy lights” featuring heavily newspaper reviews of the balls. While balls remained excessive affairs, it would take the explosion of the rock-and-roll generation to turn May Balls into the carnivalesque expression of hedonism we know today.
The sea change came in the late 1960s, when students started rejecting the perceived stuffiness of balls, and committees scrambled to keep up. Symphonies were traded for popular music acts, with names like Francois Hardy and Nick Drake appearing on Varsity May Ball guides. 1971 King’s May Ball president, Henry Gewanter, told CAM Magazine how they aspired to turn the ball into “the world’s first-ever multimedia rock and roll extravaganza”. Along with tolerating rock and roll, ball committees broke the centuries long taboo against intermingling with Midsummer fair. In 1968 a Varsity May Ball guide noted the advent of a ferris wheel at King’s May Ball: described as a “unique and exciting gimmick,” this was likely one of the first instances of a funfair ride being welcomed to a Ball. Some followed soon after, with Peterhouse’s now infamous ferris wheel first appearing in Varsity in the early 70s.
Tracing the history of the funfair business at May Balls led me to Irvin Leisure limited, a company that has been funfair business since the 1870s, but got involved in May Balls in the 1960s. George Irvin Senior, who organises ride hires for May Balls, recounts how “My grandfather, also George Irvin, started doing them in the 1960s. He diversified the business a lot by moving into balls and filming work with the Mary Poppins film”.
“there is something really special about Cambridge and May Week. It’s like nowhere else!”
George tells me how the company has sent rides to “almost all the colleges,” ranging from the cramped walls of Corpus Christi, to the spacious grounds of Homerton. Despite having worked plenty of other grand University events, Cambridge stands above the rest for George: “there is something really special about Cambridge and May Week. It’s like nowhere else! I feel like we’re a good fit for Cambridge because our community really values tradition and history”.
He describes a common ground between working fairs like Midsummer and a May Ball: “both you are trying to create a sense of magic and wonder for people”. The main difference he finds is with the age of the people they’re working with, recounting how, “At funfairs, we’ll often have people come to visit us with their sons or daughters who say ‘my parents brought me to your funfair as a child and now I’m bringing my children here’ […] You obviously don’t get quite the same sense of continuity at a May Ball”. But the essence of the event still feels the same to him. Whether at a Ball or on Midsummer Common, George claims he’s always proud to “help people celebrate some of the best days of their lives”.
Getting a fairground ride into a Cambridge College does provide a logistical headache for all those involved. Those delivering rides are provided with detailed photos of College gates to ensure the ancient walls remain intact. Photos only provide guidance, with the physical act often requiring on-the-job improvisation. An Irvin leisure “hulk arm” ride caused particular difficulties at King’s Affair last year, with the driver having to deflate the transport lorry’s tires to squeeze through the Grade I listed gate. Benny Irvin, who is often responsible for the delivery of rides, admits that the “hours it can take to get to Cambridge, build up the equipment, run it all night, then pack up and be gone again the next day,” remain his least favourite part of the job.
It’s all worth it for him though. Rides give students the chance to relive “the magic of being a kid again”. Some companies have tailored rides for student needs too, with “vintage” dodgems being marketed to May Balls. The main attraction is not the old-time aesthetic of the cars, but the manoeuvrability of their archaic structure. The “floor” the dodgems drive on is detachable piece-by-piece, meaning they can be carried into a ball by hand – a solution far preferable to anxiety-inducing lorry manoeuvres.
“the driver having to deflate the transport lorry’s tires to squeeze through the Grade I listed gate.”
Student committees tussle with the responsibility of ensuring delivery of rides doesn’t become a demolition job too. Belle Chatdokmaiprai, the Vice-President of Corpus May Ball, tells me how they have relied on their main gate on King’s Parade to deliver a helter-skelter and swing boats in the past, with plans for this years’ dodgems already underway. For her, the main attraction is how the rides are “visually appealing and provide something fun to do aside from the music and food offerings”. Despite opting for a bouncy castle to ensure a “cost effective” event, Jen Price, Trinity Hall June Event’s non-musical entertainment officer shares this sentiment. She tells me how a bouncy castle adds the opportunity to “capture some of the youthful joy it can be hard to find” elsewhere.
Showmen – the group who organise fairs up and down the country – have been at the heart of Midsummer throughout its history, along with he Showmen’s guild of Great Britain maintaining the National Fairground Archives, ensuring the rich history of fairs is not forgotten. To understand the relationship between Midsummer and May Balls, I spoke to Zoah Hedges-Stocks, one of the first showmen to come to Cambridge University. She describes fond memories of Midsummer fair: “I went every year of my life until exams when it clashed […] it was a big highlight for me as it is for all,” telling me how Midsummer is the jewel in the crown for all the travelling showmen in the Eastern Counties, being “the big social occasion where you saw everyone […] you’d want to get new clothes and plan your outfits”. She adds how this makes the fair a social hub where “lots of couples meet and families start,” – even her grandparents met at the fair.
Being a showman, Zoah has often had questions about struggling with imposter syndrome at Cambridge, but always rejected the assumption that she’d feel out of place. She states how through the fair “I knew the city, I knew the places […] my upbringing had given me the confidence to go up to anyone and talk to them”. Nowhere else did Zoah feel more at home than at May Balls. Telling me a story of watching the Trinity May Ball fireworks, she recounts how her mother told her that if she worked hard at school and got into Cambridge, she might be able to go to a Ball. Naturally then, once at Cambridge Zoah “went to every ball I could get my hands on”.
Despite the presumed stuffiness of the event, she didn’t feel out of place at her first ball. She describes the experience of “seeing funfair rides and feeling at home,” as soon as she entered Jesus May Ball in first year, before adding how the “food and booze blew my mind!” The familiarity continued when talking to showmen working the rides at balls: “My mum told me it was my duty to go find out who it is working the rides […] I always wondered if she’d show up selling candy floss one day and just not tell me!”
Unsurprisingly, then, Zoah is a big defender of the indulgence of May Balls: “the excess is the point!” she proclaims, before adding “I think it’s great that Colleges are doing more sustainability and bursaries for them, but don’t do away with them, they’re the one big thing we have over Oxford!” She estimates that she’s been to fifteen and counting – with Trinity being ticked off the list this year: “I’ll always find an excuse to go back, they were always the best nights of my life”. But in the face of rising prices, and May balls getting cancelled all around, I’m keen to ask if students should consider the Midsummer fair as a May Ball alternative. “Absolutely! Yes!” she exclaims “it would be lovely to have more students come and have a nice time, they’re taking part in history”.
Maybe you want a break pompousness and excess of May Balls. Maybe, like me, you’re feeling nostalgic for the queasiness of eating too much candy floss before having your insides flipped around on the Waltzers. Or maybe you just want something to fill the daylight hours of May week before your next ball. Whatever the reason, maybe take a stroll to Midsummer Common this May Week to indulge in a real Cambridge tradition. I know I’ll be there. Or, at the very least, remind yourself that there is a rich history in Cambridge beyond the University. And don’t forget that it took ditching the pompousness and bridging the town-gown divide for Cambridge students to learn how to have some proper fun.
