LEDBURY could get two annual street fairs instead of one, but none of them, including the time-hallowed October Fair, will be in the months actually stipulated by the original Elizabethan charter, according to a former town mayor.

The information has come to light because the Rogers family, which annually brings the funfair to Ledbury for two days every October, wants to bring a fair to town in March as well, as a new annual event.

It is a fact that Ledbury's Royal charter grants the town the right, in perpetuity, to hold not one but two streets fairs every year.

However, strictly speaking these should be taking place in late spring and early summer.

Ledbury's October Fair, which annually draws hundreds of people to the town centre, may not be as ancient as previously thought; but it could become one of two annual town fairs, with the new fair taking place in March.

The town council's October Fair Working Party has been asked to look into the matter and report back.

Cllr Annette Crowe, Ledbury's mayor, said: "A March date for a fair is not in the original charter. I need to look at the charter closely and see what there is to be said."

But Cllr Bob Barnes, a former mayor of Ledbury, said he had already looked at the Royal charter, which dates back to 1584, and while Ledbury was granted the right to two fairs a year, neither an October nor a March date is specified, and other dates clearly are.

Ledbury's market charter was issued by King Stephen to Bishop Robert de Bethune in 1138, and in 1584 Queen Elizabeth granted a new charter, allowing a weekly market on Tuesday and two fairs, on the feasts of St Philip and James, which is May 1, and St Barnabas, which is June 11.

But Cllr Barnes added: "The charter says it gives the town the right to hold "two fairs, or mops, each year, in perpetuity."

The question is whether the wording allows for a choice between summer fairs or mop fairs, or whether the mop fairs were originally considered to be the fairs specified for May and June.

But mop fairs were originally hiring fairs for agricultural labour, and these usually took place in the autumn.

Cllr Barnes said: "You could argue for one of the hop fairs being our fair in October, and that the Charter gave the town the right to hold one then."

Whenever it started, Ledbury Mop Fair, also called the October Hop Fair, has long been a calendar date for the town.

In an interview for the Ledbury Reporter in 2006, the late Pip Powell, well-known for his long-lived bicycle shop in the Homend, recalled how the event used to be much more that the two-day fun-fair it has become.

Half a century ago and more, there were certainly fairground rides, but there was usually a boxing ring too, in the High Street, and trade stalls selling goods in the Homend, especially crockery.

Further back, in a situation similar to that described by Thomas Hardy in "Far From the Madding Crowd", men seeking agricultural work would have been hired in the street.