Hiring fairs, which were held twice a year in Spring and in Autumn, were places where more mobile farm workers could hope to find jobs. These fairs had come into being during the Middle Ages when, after the Black Death, agricultural workers were hard to come by. In order to stop desperate farmers offering excessive wages to find workers it was decided that they should be hired in public and that each worker should carry an emblem of his trade to ensure that workers were hired at the correct rate.

An analysis of KILKIE occupations in the 18^th and early 19^th century show all but one of them listed as “agricultural labourers”  The one non ag-lab was listed as a farmer owning less than an acre of land which was rented from a landlord (Griffiths valuation 1859).