© Joe Douglas. 2016
In 1952 I had the first of three summer holidays with the fair. The first one I joined them in Keswick where they were for two weeks in the August Bank Holiday period.
Most of the days were spent rubbing down and painting my uncles hand built living wagon, and the evenings and nights was spent working in the stalls or on the Ark or Dodgems. He had a round stall set up as a ‘Wheel-
The fairground was the field now occupied by the Ravens Court residential home directly opposite the old pencil factory. (The pencil business is now located at Lillyhall above Distington on the Cockermouth to Whitehaven road).
Keswick is famous for its rainfall and the fairground regularly turned into a quagmire. To soak up the water and make the field suitable for customers, loads of sawdust were collected from the pencil factory and spread all round the ground.
While this dealt with the mud, a couple of sunny days brought another problem -
I was there when there was serious flooding along the Derwent Valley. The river Greta was several feet above the level of the fairground and was just level with the top of the wall leading to the Greta Bridge. Not quite as bad as the the 2009 flood when the river was photographed washing over the wall.
There was time to play, usually on the rides. When not collecting the fares we used to play catch and similar chasing games on the Ark, running round on the moving ride and getting on and off at full speed. Once you had mastered the technique it was great fun.
My sister, who was 7 at the time, was riding on the Ark and I was manning a stall when Jimmy, the chap collecting fares,came and told me she had fallen off and he was going to look for her. At that point she piped up behind me demanding to be taken back on and Jimmy picked her up and put her back on the still moving ride. It seemed she had been sitting, facing outwards, on an outer motor bike with her feet on the middle bar of the handrail. Her small feet had slipped and she flew through the rail and bounced down the steps. I wonder what today's health and safety ‘experts’ would have made of it?
Sunday mornings were spent scouring the fairground and surroundings for empty beer bottle with my cousins and the other youngsters. The bottles were sorted out in order of the public houses they came from and we took them back there and claimed the 3d per bottle. All the money was shared out making a useful addition to our pocket money.
Being able to get on and off the Ark while it was operating had a downside a couple of years later. The fair was at Cockermouth and I got on to talk to a group of girls from school. As I swung off the moving machine one of them grabbed my arm just as I let go of the machine saying I would hurt myself and keeping me ‘tied to the machine’.
The trick when getting off the machine is to step off at the bottom of a slope and use the uphill section to help you stop. When I finally got free I had lost that advantage. Fortunately I managed to stop without hurting someone waiting on the walkway or going over the side rails.
The fair left Keswick and we headed north into Scotland to a village called Newcastleton.
The memorable things about being there was the size of the salmon in the river and the fresh bread rolls from the village bakery. My early morning job was to go round and get all the orders and then go and get the rolls for everybody.
We moved from there to Berwick-
The final move of that holiday was to Carlisle and once everything was built up I went home by bus.
Keswick 1952 And More