The Nottingham Cheese Riot

The story begins with a picture almost too ridiculous to believe, the mayor of Nottingham knocked flat on his back by a wheel of cheese. It was October 2, 1766, and the Goose Fair was underway in the Old Market Square, a scene of commerce, celebration, and noise that had echoed in the city for centuries. There were stalls piled high with geese, horses, cloth, and especially the wheels of cheese that gave the fair one of its great reputations. In the confusion of that day the mayor, Robie Swann, tried to restore order when a mob had turned against traders. Instead, he found himself in the path of a rolling wheel, which struck him square and sent him sprawling. The image sounds like slapstick, the stuff of farce, but the laughter stops quickly once we look at what drove the crowd to such fury.

The Great Cheese Riot, as it came to be remembered, was not born of mischief. It was the result of desperation, hunger, and anger in a year when food was scarce across much of Europe. In England the price of basic provisions soared. Bread and cheese, staples of the poor, were suddenly out of reach. Merchants, sensing opportunity, bought up supplies and sold them at inflated rates or exported them for greater profits abroad. For a community like Nottingham, which depended on local markets, this was more than unfair. It was an attack on their survival. The riot that broke out at the Goose Fair that autumn was part of a larger wave of unrest across the country. Food riots became the most common protest of the eighteenth century, a way for ordinary men and women to enforce what they believed was a moral right to affordable sustenance. The flying cheeses, the bowled-over mayor, the chaos in the square, all of it was part of a struggle over justice and survival, a battle where humor and tragedy collided.

The year 1766 was a hard one, not just in Nottingham but across much of Europe. The harvest had been poor, grain yields were disappointing, and the markets responded with prices that cut deeply into the daily life of ordinary people. Bread was dear, cheese was scarce, and for those who lived by the week’s wages there was little room to maneuver. When food became expensive, there was no government cushion to soften the blow, no charity broad enough to feed entire towns. What people saw instead were merchants and middlemen, buying up supplies and moving them elsewhere where profits could be greater. To those living through it, this was more than greed, it was treachery, an act that turned a hungry man’s stomach into a battlefield.

This tension did not rest quietly. The autumn brought a wave of food riots across England, from Cornwall to Bristol to Derby, where crowds gathered to stop carts, block wagons, and in some cases to seize food outright. It was not simple theft, not even random chaos. It was action taken with a sense of justice, of what was owed to a community in crisis. The belief that food should first serve local mouths before leaving for distant markets was powerful, rooted in what later historians would call the moral economy. When Nottingham’s Goose Fair came round in October, the town was already a tinderbox, ready to ignite.

Nottingham itself was changing. Once a market town, it had begun to swell with new trades and early industries. Its population, once around ten thousand, had risen closer to fifteen thousand in only a few decades. More people meant greater demand, more pressure on the food supply, and sharper resentment when that supply was threatened. The Goose Fair had always been a highlight of the year, stretching back centuries, long before King Edward I granted it an official charter in 1284. By the eighteenth century it was not only the great market for geese but a fairground of every sort of trade. Horses, cloth, trinkets, livestock, and above all the wheels of cheese that gave the fair its peculiar fame. People traveled from far and wide to buy and sell. For locals, it was a chance to stock up for the season. For merchants from other counties, it was an opportunity to purchase bulk supplies for resale at a profit. Those two interests did not always sit easily together.

The Goose Fair in 1766 came against this backdrop of scarcity and suspicion. Food was short, prices were high, and rumors swirled of merchants who intended to buy up cheese by the ton and haul it away from Nottingham. To the townsfolk this felt like robbery in broad daylight, carried out under the protection of law but no less a crime. The fair that should have been a time of business and festivity was instead the stage for confrontation. The stalls that lined the Old Market Square, usually filled with chatter and barter, were now watched with a sullen eye. Every wheel of cheese was no longer just food, it was a symbol of survival, and every merchant cart was a potential enemy. The people of Nottingham had seen enough across England to know what came next.

The second of October arrived with wagons groaning under the weight of cheese, more than enough to impress any buyer at the Goose Fair. Yet instead of abundance bringing relief, it brought fury, because the prices scrawled out by sellers were beyond reach for ordinary folk. Twenty eight to thirty six shillings per hundredweight was the going rate that day, nearly twice what the same cheese had cost in Coventry only a week earlier. For a working man who might bring home a few shillings in wages, such a price was not simply steep, it was insulting. To add fuel to the fire, a group of Lincolnshire merchants stepped forward and began to buy in bulk, securing entire heaps to be hauled away to their own county for resale. To the crowd looking on this was too much to bear. Not only was cheese priced out of reach, it was now being carted off to feed strangers while Nottingham’s own tables stood bare.

As the afternoon gave way to evening, the tension snapped. A group of what reports later called rude lads confronted the Lincolnshire traders and declared that not a single cheese would leave the market until Nottingham itself was served. The traders pushed on, the crowd pushed back, and before long fists and stones were in the air. By seven o’clock the Old Market Square was in uproar. Stalls were overturned, merchants were jostled aside, and piles of cheese became plunder for the mob. The wheels, heavy as they were, made perfect tools for mischief. They were rolled down Wheeler Gate and Peck Lane like giant bowling balls, smashing into carts and scattering anyone unlucky enough to be in their path. Boys hooted with glee as they chased after them, women tucked away smaller portions under shawls, and all around was the spectacle of a city square turned into a battleground made of dairy.

In the middle of this scene the mayor himself, Robie Swann, strode in to restore order. He was a figure of authority, sworn to keep the peace, but he was also one man facing a tide of anger that no civic power could hold back. His intervention lasted only as long as it took for one massive cheese wheel to come rolling toward him. Whether it was aimed or simply careened in his direction, it struck with enough force to knock him sprawling. The people laughed, the authority of the city was humbled, and the riot rolled on. That comic moment, forever remembered in stories of the Cheese Riot, symbolized how the ordinary folk of Nottingham had taken control of the market by sheer force.

The chaos did not stop with the market stalls. Once the first barrier was broken, the crowd spread outward. They raised makeshift roadblocks to stop any wagon from leaving the city. Down by Trent Bridge they spotted a cargo boat loaded with cheese. Its owner, desperate to keep his livelihood intact, offered to sell his load at a reduced price, but the mob was in no mood for bargaining. They stormed aboard and stripped the vessel of its entire cargo. Elsewhere, a warehouse became the next target. Defenders armed with muskets managed to hold off the worst of the attack, but not before some wheels were dragged away. Nottingham was no longer a fairground. It was a battlefield where cheese itself had become the prize and the weapon.

Authorities tried to respond. A handful of men were arrested in the melee and dragged off to a coffee house that served as an impromptu holding cell. But the mob was not intimidated. They gathered outside, broke the windows, and began tearing up the very pavement to hurl at the building. The pressure was too much, and the prisoners were released. The message was clear. The crowd, not the magistrates, now controlled the city.

The night belonged to the rioters. The market that had once been a proud showpiece of Nottingham commerce was left in ruins, littered with splintered stalls and fragments of broken cheese. The mayor nursed his bruises, merchants cursed their losses, and ordinary folk carried home their spoils. Yet even as the mob dispersed into the darkness, the tension did not fade. The people of Nottingham had tasted victory, but authority was not about to let the city’s greatest fair collapse entirely into the hands of its citizens. Reinforcements were already on their way, and the next day would bring soldiers, blood, and death.

The morning after the riot the city tried to collect itself, but it was clear that civil authority had collapsed. The Goose Fair was no longer under control of the mayor or magistrates, and the people were emboldened by their victory. Wagons of cheese stood guarded or hidden away, but rumor spread quickly that more seizures were planned. The frightened merchants and civic leaders knew they could not contain another night like the one before. So a message was sent to Derby, and with it the call for soldiers. By dawn on Friday the fifteenth regiment of Dragoons clattered into Nottingham, their horses and sabers promising to do what the town watch could not. For a few hours it worked. The sight of armed cavalry brought a sullen quiet to the square. Stalls reopened cautiously, though trade was thin. The townsfolk glared at the merchants but held back.

Yet the peace was only an illusion. As night drew in, the crowds gathered again and the anger that had only been smoldering now caught fire. At the New Change, near the heart of the town, people clashed with soldiers in running skirmishes. Stones were thrown, muskets fired, and this time the riot claimed a life. William Eggleston, a farmer from Car Colston, had brought his own cheese to sell at the fair. As the fighting broke out he knelt to guard his wares, determined not to lose them to the mob. In the chaos a musket ball struck him in the leg. The wound was not instantly fatal, but infection set in, and within days he was dead. His death gave the riot its martyr, proof that the laughter of rolling cheeses had turned into blood on the cobblestones.

The fighting did not end with Eggleston. On Saturday a crowd seized another boat near Trent Bridge, carrying away its entire cargo of cheese. The Riot Act was read, the formal warning that anyone remaining assembled would face deadly force, but the words were as useless as paper in the wind. On Sunday and Monday the unrest still flickered. A mob gathered at a windmill near Trent Bridge, perhaps with the intent to destroy it, but they scattered as soldiers approached. Only after four days of confrontation did Nottingham begin to calm, and even then wagons leaving the city were forced to travel in armed convoys for fear of ambush.

Elsewhere the unrest spilled beyond the city. At Castle Donington villagers had taken cheese from a warehouse. The owner, unwilling to accept such humiliation, raised a mounted posse of thirty men and rode out to reclaim his property. But the townspeople were ready. The local magistrate refused to grant warrants, saying he would not meddle. When the posse tried to act anyway, they were met on the hills by rows of women and children who rained stones and bricks down upon them. The horsemen panicked and fled in confusion, chased by villagers who rang the church bells as if celebrating a great military triumph. It was called a signal victory for the people, one more sign that authority in 1766 was not nearly as secure as it liked to imagine.

For the authorities the lessons were bitter. The mayor had been bowled over, soldiers had killed a local farmer, warehouses had been stripped, boats emptied, and the most famous fair in the Midlands turned into a riot scene. The Leicester and Nottingham Journal tried to lay the blame on the rioters themselves, accusing them of worsening the shortage they complained of. Yet everyone in Nottingham knew why it had happened. Hunger and profiteering had met head on, and when push came to shove, the people had decided that cheese would not leave their city until they had their share.

When the last embers of the riot faded, Nottingham was left with more than broken stalls and scattered cheese. It had revealed the fragility of authority in an age when the crowd still held power in numbers. Civil magistrates could not keep order, the mayor had been humbled in public, and soldiers had fired on citizens. Yet beneath the comedy and tragedy lay a deeper truth about eighteenth century England. These were not riots for the sake of chaos, but a form of protest rooted in the belief that food must be fairly priced and fairly shared. Historians later gave this idea a name, the moral economy, but to the people of Nottingham it was nothing more than common sense. When hunger loomed, when merchants seemed to profit from their misery, the crowd stepped in to enforce justice where the law had failed.

The Cheese Riot was one scene in a wider drama playing out across the country that autumn. In Bristol, Derby, Norwich, and Gloucester, crowds acted with similar purpose, seizing provisions, blocking exports, even setting their own prices and selling food at what they believed was fair. To some it looked like mob rule. To others it was nothing more than the community protecting itself. Nottingham’s riot, with its flying wheels and bowled over mayor, simply offered the most memorable example.

The memory did not fade. William Eggleston’s death marked the cost of standing one’s ground, a farmer slain in the act of guarding his own goods. The stories of cheeses rolling down Wheeler Gate and Peck Lane became part of local lore, retold as both farce and warning. And the Goose Fair itself carried on, its history colored by that October of 1766 when its reputation for cheese turned into rebellion. Two and a half centuries later, in 2016, the anniversary was marked with speeches, reenactments, and the same mix of humor and seriousness that defined the original event. Nottingham embraced its rebellious past with pride, acknowledging that what might sound like a silly story was in fact a struggle over survival.

The Great Cheese Riot reminds us that food has always been more than nourishment. It is dignity, justice, and the line between order and upheaval. The sight of a mayor bowled over by a runaway cheese will always raise a smile, but behind that comic image lies a history of desperation and defiance. For the people of Nottingham in 1766, the fair was no laughing matter. It was the stage where the basic right to eat was defended by force, and where the crowd, for a moment at least, proved stronger than the market.