the festival changing date each year soon changed the fair day to 25 July, the feast day of St James. It was later changed to the first fortnight in September. The fair, which was held in the Churchyard and adjoining streets, was regarded as the most important of the Bristol Fairs. The income from the Fair meant that St James Church could be richly decorated, in 1498 an elaborate reredos was built to go with the existing rood screen. The contract made it clear that the rood screen should be bigger and better than the one recently erected at St Mary Redcliffe. The papers from a court case in 1518-19 show that the fair was so popular it had overflowed the boundaries of the graveyard and stalls and booths were sited in the surrounding streets. The entertainments at the fair included theatre, bear-baiting, sports as well as minstrels and wrestling, exhibitions of wild animals, acrobats, puppets (including Punch and Judy), magicians and musicians. One year the prize exhibition was 'Toby the salient Pig.' Further entertainments took place on 'The Marsh' which later became Queen Square. Amongst the groups of players on the Mayor's ledger books for the St James Fair are the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which could suggest that Shakespeare performed in Bristol. The Ledger kept by the merchant John Smyth shows how he (and other city merchants) planned their year so that their goods (such as wine, dyes, oil, iron, fruit, and luxury goods) would be in stock in time for the fair. By the 17th century the fair was so prominent that merchant ships sailing into Bristol for it were frequently attacked by Turkish pirates in the Bristol Channel. The last fair was held in 1837 under pressure from moralists and strict religious people concerned about the corruption of the young and disapproving of such frivolities set in a graveyard. It also subsequently left its mark on the geography of Bristol as a nearby road in Broadmead is called the Horsefair. The St James Barton roundabout (The Bearpit) retains the name of the Barton or Priory Farm, on which's land the Fair was once held. St James Priory Project After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the nave of the priory church continued in use as an Anglican parish church. It fell into disuse in the 1980s and declared a redundant church before the Church Commissioners put it up