Waddington's Funfairs (Initiated c1860 - 1899)

Dates

• Existence: Initiated c1860 - 1899

Biography

The Waddington family business started with Abraham Waddington Senior, a roundabout proprietor and innovator, who took out several patents in the late nineteenth century for improvements to fairground machinery. Amongst his earliest machines was a set of bikes which were travelled with a chain-drive traction engine. Later he bought a Sea on Land, built in King's Lynn by Frederick Savage. The ride was powered by a McLaren Traction Centre Engine which had been driven onto an 18 foot gantry.

When Abraham Senior died, the business was continued by his widow, Mrs Hannah Waddington, and their son John William Senior (1874-1928). Mrs Waddington travelled her Gondola Switchback and later a Tunnel Railway. Visitors to a fairground in Yorkshire in the 1900s would have had their first sight of a motorcar when they took a ride on her Motorcar Switchback. John Willie Senior, who continued the ride after the death of his parents, married Susannah Lee and had two sons; John William Junior (1898-1932) and Abraham Junior in (1900-1918).

By the turn of the century Waddington had a set of 4-abreast Ostriches, his own Switchback, joined in 1901 by the first set of Steam Yachts and later a Bioscope show. In 1905 he had eight replicas made of his De Dion motor car and those replaced the Gondolas on his Switchback. Much of the equipment was sold by the outbreak of the Great War and just the Yachts were kept, although the sons bought their own set in 1914. John Willie Senior's youngest son Abraham Junior wrote a diary in 1916 which provides us a graphic account of life for the showpeople during the First World War.

Abraham Junior died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918 age 18. His father John Willie Senior continued to travel his yachts throughout Yorkshire until his death at the age of fifty four in 1928. His remaining son, John Willie Junior, married Margaret Shufflebottom of the Wild West Shows and they continued to travel the yachts in the Eastern Counties. John Willie Junior died in 1932 age thirty four, after his death, his widow Margaret continued travelling the Yachts in the Norwich area and later remarried her foreman Arthur Bird.

The original Savage Yachts new to Waddingtons in 1901 still survive. On Mr Waddington's death they passed to Walter Waddington's son, Herbert, and on his death to his daughter Priscilla, who married Harry Lee. For many years they were the only set of Steam Yachts travelling and later they were owned by a private collector in Lincolnshire.

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