Page 30 - Thrapston Life July 2023

GLANCE
AT THE
PAST
Eric Franklin looks back
Thrapston has had many a fair and entertainment over the years. More recently, Charter Fair has filled the High Street with a multiplicity of stands. Over the last 200 years, there have been a great variety of visiting attractions, this article listing just a few.
and Venetian gondolas to town. The postcard taken on Feast Sunday in 1906 shows some of the crowds in Market Square, dressed in their finery. There were always supporting attractions such as William Taylor’s Bioscope show featuring the Marenghi organ (shown top right in 1973 – Denis Barber archive) and Professor Ball’s boxing booth. The bioscope showed films in the days when moving films were still in their infancy, having been invented by the Lumiere
The Northampton Mercury reported in
May 1832 that Thrapston Fair had horses in abundance, whilst 30 years later the fair was said to have been very well attended by businessmen and pleasure-seekers. Regular visitors
were Bostock and Wombwell’s
Menagerie and Lord George Sangers
Circus. The poster and photograph are
both from the period 1890 to 1910. In
1930, a large monkey escaped from
Wombwell’s show in Northampton and
led chasers across meadows and over a
railway before being safely returned to
his cage.
Henry Thurston, the son of a Cambridge brickmaker, is a name synonymous with travelling fairs. Thrapston Feast was a major event in town in Edwardian days when he brought his four-abreast steam galloping horses
Brothers who combined a camera and projector in 1895 and became the first to present moving images to a paying audience. The fair, which lasted four days, was held on the sports field which is now covered by the Nine Arch Estate, and as well as the rides had marquees selling such refreshments as cockles, fried fish, hot sausages and pineapples,
a rare treat at the time.
Henry’s son, Henry John (born in 1904) took
over the business, which continued until his retirement in 1973 when he moved with his wife Ivy to live in Spinney Close Thrapston. He died in 1988 and is buried with his wife in Oundle
a large monkey escaped from Wombwell’s show
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