This film is part of Free

Whitsuntide Fair at Preston (1906)

All the fun of the Whitsuntide Fair in Edwardian Preston.

Non-Fiction 1906 1 mins Silent

Overview

This most evocative of Mitchell & Kenyon's fairground films shows an array of wonderful rides - the Racing Bantams carousel, boat swings, switchback gondolas - and the delighted faces of the holiday crowd. Better still, it shows the fantastic frontage of Green's Cinematograph show where this very film would have been shown. The intriguing machine in the foreground is a coin-operated phonograph.

Local wakes fairs and feasts, once centred on trading and economic activity, had by the Edwardian age become high-tech carnivals of fun. The visit of the fair during Wakes Week or the bank holidays was the means by which many of Mitchell & Kenyon's films were first exhibited to the public.