re-establish the ancient custom that stalls still standing on Michaelmas could be demolished, by driving his carriage through piles of uncleared crockery. Decline Stourbridge and other general fairs began losing their influence in the 1600s. After 1660 retail customers and wholesalers began to only use fairs as a means to buy agricultural goods and cloth. The local provincial and metropolitan shops began to be the place where the wealthy were purchasing expensive textiles and novelty products. Another reason for the fair's demise was that visitors were starting to venture out of the fair and into local shops to spend their money. This was a better experience for travellers compared to going from merchant booth to merchant booth. Due to the local availability of expensive textiles and other luxury items, the fair became a place strictly for wholesale commerce. Merchants cared less about displaying the novelty goods they had to sell but more about making orders of large quantity wholesale goods. The fairs became less attractive to travellers and locals alike. In the late eighteenth century, the popularity of the fair began to decline, partly due to the arrival of canals and improved roads leading to the decline in the importance of rivers as a means of navigation. The fair only lasted a fortnight, and the amount of income it generated for the town had fallen. By the nineteenth century, the fair served more as a means of entertainment than being of economic importance, and was only a few days in length. As the Victorian town grew, the common became surrounded by poor housing, and the rich visitors became disinclined to visit a potentially dangerous area. The Midsummer Fair, on the other hand, was in a more convenient central location and the Stourbridge Fair fell out of favour. Stourbridge Fair continued until 1933 (there would then be a gap of over 70 years before its revival) when the fair was opened by the Mayor of Cambridge, Florence Ada Keynes (mother of John Maynard Keynes), attended by the Clerk of the Peace and the Sergeant-at-Mace "in the presence of a couple of women with babies in their arms and an ice-cream barrow." Revival The fair was revived in 2004. After the 2019 event, due to COVID-19 restrictions, there was no Fair until 2022. The modern fair is a free community event with dancers, musicians and storytellers, and stalls, activities and history talks.