Rack rent, open market rent, and fairs
5 July 2025Jul 2025 – For continuing professional development, Ii was reading about an Act of June 1657 “Annoyance by Buildings.; Fines for Houses built on new Foundations, within ten miles of the Walls of London, since the 25 of March, 1620” (for the preventing the multiplicity of Buildings in and about the Suburbs of London, and within ten miles of the same), becoming interested in the term “rack rent”.
I’d always assumed “rack rent” meant the new full open market rent, but not so. Rather, not the only meaning. According to Wikipedia, “historically, rack-rent has often been a term of protest used to denote an unjustly excessive rent (the word “rack” evoking the medieval torture device), usually one paid by a tenant farmer. The two conceptions… – the other the full rent of a property, including both land and improvements as if subject to an immediate open-market rental review – …of rack-rent both apply when excessive rent is obtained by threat of eviction resulting in uncompensated dispossession of improvements the tenant himself has made. I.e., by charging rack-rent, the landowner unjustly uses his power over the land to effectively confiscate wages, in addition to merely charging the tenant interest and depreciation on the capital improvements which the landlord himself has made to the land.”
I know the origin of “open market rent” which, despite case law deciding “open” is superfluous, might not be. It originates from the bygone era when markets were not open to all.
The history of fairs and markets is fascinating, at least I find it so, particularly for the origin of market towns, the grant of Royal charters, and weights and measures. Generally, it is from market towns that bricks-and-mortar physical shops evolved. Fairs were often for employment, when at harvest time jobseekers would offer their services and afterwards some entertainment. The “mop” in mop fairs was a tassel which successful applicants wore on their head to signify having been offered a job.
Some 30 years ago when. in spare time, I chaired the Ledbury Carnival Committee, I fell out with the fair’s representative over a difference in opinion where I wanted the fair sited and his assertion it had to be in the high street. Searching for another fair, I discovered that under the code of conduct of the Showmans’ Guild, another fair couldn’t come unless the existing fair had resigned. Instead of the fair paying us the usual fee, we hired a children’s roundabout and discovered just how profitable fairground attractions are. The upshot of the fair refusal was that its sub-tenant stallholders were furious with the representative because Ledbury was, apparently, one of the most profitable towns in the region. Even since, the fair has done as told! The blueprint I introduced for that Carnival has also been used ever since by successive committees.
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