Cloth Fair ribbon cutting ceremony & debate

The now commonplace habit of ribbon-cutting first took place in Cloth Fair, which is the road running alongside St Bartholomew the Great.

To mark this part of our heritage, artist Damien Hirst has designed a special fabric for the Lord Mayor to cut as the opening ceremony of this year’s Bartholomew Fair.

We will welcome high-profile speakers from the City, politics and the Church for a debate chaired by the Bishop of London. The first disputations took place here at St Bartholomew the Great in the Middle Ages and were the forerunner of parliamentary debates and academic tutorials, initiating the concept of a lively and rigorous exchange of ideas designed to persuade an audience. Our proposition for debate will be ‘This House believes that the love of money is the root of the nation’s evils’.