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Farmer Jenkins' Visit to the White City

A fascinating visual record of London's White City fairground, in which an elderly couple experience some bizarre rides.

Comedy 1910 12 mins Silent

Overview

An elderly country yokel and his wife visit the fairground at London's White City where they enjoy themselves on a number of bizarre rides. These amusements include a roller coaster mountain ride (complete with frontal point-of-view shots), wicker dodgem cars, the dizzying Flip-Flap and something called the Wiggle Woggle. A fascinating visual record of a once-popular London attraction.

The White City was built on farmland in the Shepherd's Bush area of London to house both the Franco-British Exhibition and the Olympic Games of 1908. As well as a stadium, the site included over a hundred exhibition buildings and pavilions constructed in an Oriental style, all of which were painted white (hence the area's acquired name), alongside the fairground featured here, which quickly became a popular London attraction. Various exhibitions and fairs were held at the site through to 1937, while the BBC's now abandoned Television Centre was also partly built on the same site.