Goth Fayre Before Christmas at Stowmarket Community Centre hailed a success

A town’s gothic fayre has been hailed a success after it welcomed visitors into the enchanting world of witchcraft and the macabre.

‘The Goth Fayre Before Christmas’ was held yesterday at Stowmarket Community Centre in Hillside which offered a range of gothic items including taxidermy, antiques, wicca goods and handmade jewellery along with readings.

Organiser Allie Bloomfield created the event to provide a space for unique creations, like her own ‘horror dolls’, after finding a gap in the market in Suffolk.

She said: “My nephew, my daughter and my sister all create our own little oddities, but we just couldn’t find anywhere locally where we could sell these kind of things — my nephew was even driving all the way to London to sell his stuff.

“I just decided one day, you know what, I bet we could just put on our event — so that’s exactly what we did in May and it was an amazing success.

“With this being our second event, we’ve nearly doubled in size and expanded into three other rooms at the community centre.

“It was simply marvellous.”

Allie said all the visitors were friendly and the stallholders got on really well, sharing their mutual love of the everything gothic.

With the event being such a success, Allie is looking forward to hosting more gothic markets in the future — with the plan to return for the third event in May 2025.

She added: “The feedback from the community has been amazing — people said that this is somewhere they could be who they wanted to be, with like-minded people.

“It’s one thing to be able to host an event like this, as it’s completely unique for somewhere like Stowmarket, but to hear those kind of comments from people is really special.”