Funfair and Showground workers

The History

Fairs have been popular since medieval times.

With the coming of the industrial age fairs saw big changes with the development of mechanical rides and easy transport.

Few fairs ran in fixed positions so the men and women involved moved around the country following the fairs leaving little permanent trace of themselves.

Birth , marriage or death could happen at any place in the country making verification hard for family historians.

Many fairground workers would be listed as hawkers in the official records making a further difficulty.

What records can you find?

The main UK database is the UK Fairground Ancestors  which has a large collection of lists and information on fairworkers and the families who worked on the fairs.

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The University of Sheffield maintains the National Fairground Archive  .

There is little family history material online so a personal visit would be required although there are some great photographs and background material.

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Newspapers can be useful as fairs were normally recorded. The difficulty is that the workers were traveling all of the time and finding the right local newspaper can be difficult unless it can be tied down to a specific event.