My 8 year old dughter has just decided to write a blog charting her growing up on the fairground, so if anyone is interested it can be found at A Fair Kind Of Life.. At the minute its just a basic template, but as soon as I get time I will help her add some bells and whistles.


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As I explained in a previous post, a large chunk of our work is for Victorian style attractions. To help capitalize on this we have just uploaded our newest website, Victorian Funfair Hire. This will be developed and expanded to concentrate on a rather large niche market that we hope to grow over the next couple of years.

Victorian Attractions For Your Event

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In general, your average travelling showmen is pretty resourceful and generally multiskilled. Everything from an electronic engineer, through a qualified welder to an airbrush artists can be found withing the funfair community. In fact, virtually any requirement that a showman had, could be met within our industry. The money could be circulated and kept ringfenced in this business and would benefit us all. Sadly, many people would prefer to to spend their money outside of the showland fraternity, simply because they feel that by giving money to another showman they are somehow helping him up the ladder of success and they don't want that.

A number of years ago I was designing and selling lighting systems. At a large Northern funfair, (Newcastle Hoppings), there is a section of the site reserved for traders who are selling goods directly to the showmen. One of these traders specialised in electrical and lighting goods. He asked me if I had any lighting control units ready assembled that he could sell on his stand. I had two identical units, I gave him one to sell and kept the other for myself as someone I knew was coming to look at it. The gentleman in question duly arrived, he looked at the unit and we discussed the price which was £200. He told me he would think about it and let me know. He then left me and visited the aforementioned trader, where he immediately paid £350 for my other identical unit! The trader then came back to me and took my second unit to replace the one he had just sold. I was happy, I had my money, the trader had made a nice profit, and the showman in question was happy, he had given his money to someone outside of the business???

A distant cousin of mine has been decorating fairground rides and transport for a few years now. I recently had a quick look over his site and was pleasantly surprised, I hadn't realised just how good he was. Anyone wanting custom airbrushed artwork should look over DAZEBESPOKE. I intend to practice what I preach and am waiting for a price from him to redecorate some of our attractions in a traditional Victorian theme.

The Professional Approach To Corporate Funfairs

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We have attended for the last 3 years, an event in Rotherham called Aston Children's Carnival. Whilst we were there last year, one of the parish councillors introduced himself and told me that he ran a community group. He inquired about the possibility of hiring a couple of children's rides for the local community groups at two venues in the area. As we rely on the support of the parish council I sorted him a really good price out.

One of these events took place this morning. The first lady up with her children remarked "Is this it, only two rides, pathetic, there should be more". Now the parish council were paying us to attend. The cost of the rides at the point of service (to the children) was nothing, zip, zilch, free gratis and complimentary. Yet despite the fact that they were paying nothing, the first thing this woman did was complain. Sometimes I think that the cynics in this world see things more clearly than the rest of us.


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I've had a fun time just lately with our computer systems. The main server in our network went down, and according to the repair shop I dropped it off at, it wasn't worth repairing. I jumped in the car and went straight round to PC World, to buy the fastest, highest spec Quad Core Processor machine they stocked (supplied with Vista, the new Microsoft operating system). After Setting it up, it seemed to run light years quicker than the existing Windows XP system, the new Vista interface seemed much smoother and more powerful than the old one, and I was well pleased. Right upto the point where I discovered that a lot of the programs I use for website development and planning just don't work with the new system.

This has led to a week of having to upgrade programs to newer versions, and wrestle with installing a new networking system to enable filesharing between computers. The new web development system, doesn't seem to like our existing websites, so I think the replacement schedule for them will have to be brought forward to this winter.

On a different tack, does anyone actually read this blog?


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We have found over the course of the summer, that although large amounts of money are being invested in the latest equipment for use on the fairgrounds, a great many corporate clients prefer what we would term 'old fashioned' attractions. Given the choice of the fastest, latest white knuckle thriller, or a traditional helter skelter, we are surprised to find that many people book the latter.

To meet this need we are rebranding some of our attractions in traditional decor. Items such as the flying chairs that are decorated with childrens cartoons, lend themselves to being repainted in the traditional scrollwork of the Victorian era.

One such event was the recent official opening of Ropner Park in Stockton. After a multi million pound refurbishment program the park has been turned into one of the most stunning examples of its type in the North or England, if not the U.K. We supplied a small childrens traditional funfair consisting of a helter skelter, mini carousel, swing boats and candy floss cart.

Traditional Funfairs For Hire

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