Here are Clothiers from Hallifax, Leeds, Wakefield and Huthersfield in Yorkshire, and from Rochdale, Bury, &c., in Lancashire, with vast Quantities of Yorkshire Cloths, Kerseyes, Pennistons, Cottons, &c., with all sorts of Manchester Ware, Fustians, and things made of Cotton Wool; of which the Quantity is so great, that they told me there were near a thousand Horse-Packs of such Goods from that side of the Country, and these took up a side and a half of the Duddery at least; also a part of a street of Booths were taken up with Upholsterer’s Ware, such as Tickings, Sackings, Kidderminster Stuffs, Blankets, Rugs, Quilts, &c. In the Duddery I saw one Ware-house or Booth with six Apartments in it, all belonging to a Dealer in Norwich Stuffs only, and who they said had there above £20,000 value in those Goods, and no other. Western Goods had their Share here also, and several Booths were fill’d as full with Serges, Du-Roys, Druggets, Shalloons, Cantaloons, Devonshire Kersies, &c., from Exeter, Taunton, Bristol, and other Parts West, and some from London also. But all this is still out done, at least in show, by two Articles, which are the peculiars of this Fair, and do not begin till the other part of the Fair, that is to say for the Woolen Manufacture begins to draw to a Close; these are Wooll, and the Hops, as for the Hops there is scarce any Price fix’d for Hops in England, till they know how they sell at Sturbridge Fair; the Quantity that appears in the Fair is indeed prodigious, and they, as it were, possess a large Part of the Field on which the Fair is kept, to themselves; they are brought directly from Chelmsford in Essex, from Canterbury and Maidstone in Kent, and from Farnham in Surrey, besides what are brought from London, the growth of those, and other places. Enquiring why this Fair should be thus, of all other Places in England, the Center of that Trade; and so great a Quantity of so Bulky a Commodity be carry’d thither so far: I was answer’d by one thoroughly acquainted with that matter, thus: The Hops, said he, for this part of England, grow principally in the two counties of Surrey and Kent, with an exception only of the town of Chelmsford in Essex, and there are very few planted anywhere else. ... I must not omit here also to mention, that the River Grant, or Cam, which runs close by the N.W. side of the Fair in its way from Cambridge to Ely, is Navigable, and that by this means, all heavy Goods are brought even to the Fair-Field, by Water Carriage from London, and other Parts, first to the Port of Lynn, and then in Barges up the Ouse, from the Ouse into the Cam, and so, as I say to the very Edge of the Fair.