One of the major holidays was Whitsun, followed next day by the infamous Bow Fair (otherwise known as the Green Goose Fair).
A poet named Taylor, wrote of the revels in 1630:
“At Bow, the Thursday after Pentecost, there is a fair of green geese ready rost, where, as a goose is ever dog cheap there the sauce is over somewhat sharp and deare.’
Taylor then went on rather sniffily about the conduct and behaviour of the crowd at the fair. So raucous was it, that by the mid-1800s the authorities had had enough. Bow Fair was banned, leaving its legacy in the name of Fairfield Road, the old site of the Goose Fair.