Exeter Events

Exeter’s calendar is a small town’s, with one event that draws on its particular history.

American Independence Festival — mid-July

Exeter marks its part in the revolution with a festival built around a specific and local fact: New Hampshire’s provincial congress sat here, the state treasury was in a house on the main street, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence was carried here from Philadelphia in July 1776 and read aloud to the town. The festival re-enacts that reading from the bandstand, with a rider arriving to deliver the document, and surrounds it with a reenactors’ encampment, militia drills and musket demonstrations, eighteenth-century craft and tavern food, tours of the Ladd-Gilman House and the Folsom Tavern, and a fireworks display. It has run since 1991, it is organised by the American Independence Museum, and it is unusual among American historical festivals in commemorating something that genuinely happened on the ground it occupies. The town centre closes for it and the crowds are large by local standards.

Autumn colour — late September to mid-October

Not an event, but the reason most visitors choose those weeks; the region publishes foliage reports.

Academy calendar — through the year

Phillips Exeter runs a public lecture, concert and exhibition programme, and graduation and parents’ weekends fill the town’s accommodation.

Exeter farmers’ market and summer bandstand concerts — June to September

A weekly market on Swasey Parkway and free evening concerts at the bandstand, which is where the town actually gathers through the warm months.

Holiday events — December

A tree lighting at the bandstand and a holiday parade, with the town at its most photogenic under snow.