QUALITY STREET FAIR

Quality Street is a Holiday Fair with Dickensian flair run each November. The fair includes a popular greenery booth run by the Altar Guild, vendor booths (featuring both parishioners’ products and those from outside vendors), teacup auction, Christmas booth, homemade sweet shop, book sale, indoor tag sale, as well as roaming carollers and lunch service in the parish hall. Each year, all of the proceeds are donated to the Canton Food Bank and the Canton Fuel Bank. In most recent pre-pandemic years, totals raised were $6,000-$7,000.

Where does the name Quality Street come from?

There is an actual Quality Street in Merstham, Great Britain, where a local parish has been running a (mostly annual) fair since the 1300’s. In 1901, J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) made that place famous by writing Quality Street, a play centered on quaint small-town life.

The name is also synonymous with a popular candy. In the early 1930s, only the wealthy could afford boxed chocolates made from exotic ingredients from around the world, with elaborate packaging that often cost as much as the chocolates themselves. In Great Britain, Harold Mackintosh had inherited a candy business from his parents, who’d developed a soft toffee candy that was popular. He had the idea to cover his different toffees with chocolate, wrap them in colorful paper, and present them in low-cost, yet attractive tins. Packaged in this way, the chocolates could be sold at a reasonable price and would, therefore, be available to working-class families. (Source: Wikipedia).

One could surmise the items available at our holiday fair are good quality at affordable prices – and that we’ve got some really tasty sweets.