So you’ve read about the stuff Coulson Macleod bought at The Christ­mas Fair.

Now for some of the other lovely stall holders…

One neigh­bour­ing stall was…

(part of the Joules brand, which is a local busi­ness). They had piles & piles of stripey socks & ‘ram pants’ (get it?)

Our neigh­bour on the other side was Simon from Cooper­andLeith, an online store that sells homewares.

This is Simon’s story…

In the early part of the last cen­tury my Great Grand­father, Eric Cooper, built a small retail empire of three stores in a thriv­ing col­li­ery town in the West Rid­ing of Yorkshire.

While Eric was hard at work, my Great Grand­mother, Emma, was busy rais­ing a young fam­ily & fur­nish­ing their new home, Moun­t­pleas­ant House, with goods pur­chased from clear­ance sales at local coun­try house estates.

With Cooper­andLeith I aim to com­bine Eric & Emma’s blend of retail vis­ion & eclectic home­mak­ing by sourcing a com­ple­ment­ary mix of the best con­tem­por­ary artisan products, indi­vidual vin­tage finds, & unique heir­loom pieces to help you per­son­al­ise your home.

The pic­ture above shows my Great Great Grand­mother, Har­riet, stand­ing out­side one of the shops on Sta­tion Lane.

Don’t you just love this story?

There was also Ella James Liv­ing, who had the biggest stall & was doing a roar­ing trade with all things Christ­massy. It was great to finally meet Ash­ley Todd, the owner, as we seem to bump into each other online quite a bit.

Oppos­ite there was…

Dress-A-Doll were selling the cutest hand­made rag­dolls ever.

Each doll comes in her own suit­case like the one pic­tured above. The stall had rows of little hand­made dresses on wooden hangers & pad­ded jack­ets (how ador­able is the one above?), & ear muffs, & tiny shoes.  Now we have to be quiet about this, but our nine-year-old fell in love with one par­tic­u­lar rag doll & is get­ting one for Christ­mas. Thanks to her Nanna. So not a Coulson Macleod pur­chase. Hence it went in this post.

If you like the look of The Christ­mas Fair, then it’s hap­pen­ing all over again this Sat­urday, 8^th Decem­ber 2012 at the Three Swans Hotel in Mar­ket Harborough.

We’ll be there. Selling our paper prints again (& buy­ing more stuff prob­ably). Hope to see you.

Tags: CooperandLeith, Dress-A-Doll, Ella James Living, Joules, Rampant Sporting, Three Swans Hotel

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