“If I say to local people my name’s Townsend, they often say, ‘What, the Fair people from Chickerell?’ Which is true, that’s who I am. My family’s been here in Putton Lane since 1933. When my Granny bought the land it was a turnip field in winter, and of course it was very, very muddy; we had heavy traction engines to put in the field, so we bought cartloads of ‘bats’, which are reject bricks, from the local brickworks and made a road right down through the field. That was the beginning of our showman’s yard. We had traction engines for many years, with dynamos powering the rides and lights. We bought two which came from the Portland stone quarries. My Uncle Tom paid £25 for the pair, and we converted one into a showman’s engine, with the canopy, and all the brass work. This one was originally called Nellie, after a servant girl who worked at Portland Castle. My uncle christened her ‘Queen Mary’, by breaking a bottle of milk stout over the wheel. She’s owned by a family called Cook now, and still goes to the Great Dorset Steam Fair every year.

My family have been showmen since 1876. My great granddad lost his job, driving the mail coach between Radstock and Bath. He had nine mouths to feed, so he bought a small children’s roundabout, which packed away into a cart, and was pulled by a horse. When it was open, the horse was led around, thus turning the roundabout to give the children their ride, and that little ride was the start of show business for us. My grandparents’ last child born was my Dad, and he was one of triplets, born in Commercial Road in Weymouth, in a showman’s living wagon parked by the water’s edge. Sadly the other two babies didn’t survive.

My parents, Joe and Esme Townsend, raised me, an only child, in the old-fashioned way; never lie, never swear, work hard, and show respect. I have never met anyone who didn’t like my father. He always wore a trilby hat; he had a kind heart, and worked hard all his life. They met when Townsend’s fair was open at Milborne Port; she came to the fair, had a ride on the swinging boats, and her dress blew up in the breeze. Dad caught sight of her legs, and that was it. In the early days, education wasn’t seen as particularly important in showland. My Dad did go to school in School Street in Weymouth for a while, so he could read the paper every day, but through dictating he got someone else to write his love letters to my Mum when they were courting.

My earliest memory as a child was of Uncle Dick and Uncle Pat painting the rides in our big paint shed, ready for the summer season. We were open from April to November, travelling all over Dorset, Somerset, and a bit of Wiltshire. So really I only had half the schooling of other children, as we were on the road all that time. I can remember my first day at Chickerell School, when I cried, because I’d stepped into everybody else’s world, and in my life I’d only experienced our world. I felt very alone. Every year after Portland Fair, which was always the last fair of the season, my Mum made sure I went back to school. She was determined I should read and write, but even now my spelling and punctuation’s far from perfect. People often say to me ‘I suppose you’ve had a colourful and exciting life’. Not really, because the fairground was my world; the rides, the sounds, the travelling, it was normal life to me. I was brought up in a caravan; then when I was nine, we had our bungalow built here in Putton Lane. Like many show children, as a little girl people called me gypsy, because my family were show people. I’d say ‘no I’m not’, but now I’m older I can explain to people what the differences are between us and gypsies.

Growing up most of the time on the road, early in the season there weren’t that many other children to play with, not until the later part of the season when other showmen and their families would join us at the fairs; then I’d see more of my friends. My school reports would always say the same: ‘Kay does her best’, so it’s true my education was limited, and it was hard catching up with the other children. But I’ve never let it hold me back, to the extent that I’ve now published four books about the showman’s life and history – with considerable help from spell-check and proof readers! Three of my books were printed by Creeds of Broadoak, near Bridport, who were exceptionally helpful to me as an ‘amateur’ writer.

Our season’s work included charter fairs, which were always on a fixed date, for example Wool Fair which was always the second weekend of May, then Beaminster Fair. Other fairs and carnivals, we would apply to the local committee for permission to bring our fair along, so the season’s dates were always planned in advance. We would also do private events, where we would rent a field from a farmer for a week outside a town to hold a fair. We did this at Swanage, usually for two weeks. When we were on the road, we had three rides; we had Dodgems, an Octopus, and a Noah’s Ark ride. Since 1918, we have had swinging boats and roundabouts on Weymouth beach, and we still have family connections with today’s operation there. I stopped the travelling a few years ago now: something just clicked and I thought I’d had enough of it, although once a showman always a showman. It’s in my blood, and I still feel more at home in my caravan than I do in any house. Nowadays I run a shooting stall which I take to shows, right down to Cornwall sometimes. The operating costs now for the travelling fair are phenomenal, with fuel, labour, and capital outlay on the rides, plus the insurance and testing of the equipment for safety. Then during the winter maintaining and painting the equipment for the season all adds up, and makes the rides quite expensive. We also have to compete with theme parks, where you pay a fixed entry, then all the rides are free.
If I’d been asked say four years ago whether I thought the showman’s way of life would continue, I’d probably have said not for much longer. But I’ve changed my mind now; people are adapting to change, and although many families have left the business, there’s a few people who are determined to keep it going. It’s a struggle, but they’re supported by the Showmen’s Guild which is always there behind them. The atmosphere at the fairs has changed a lot, so that it’s noisier and glossier now; but thankfully there are still people keeping the old traditions and styles going.

I actually launched my last book standing in front of our old engine ‘Queen Mary’, and that was a very special moment for me. Writing about my family’s way of life and the history of showmen has been very important to me, and it’s good to preserve and pass on the stories. I wouldn’t change my upbringing for anything, because who I was yesterday makes me who I am today.”

“My childhood home was in Tunbridge Wells, on the Kent and Sussex border. My father was the headmaster of the senior school, what would now be called a comprehensive. I found it something of a disadvantage, growing up, to be the son of the headmaster; it’s a bit like being the son of the vicar, and I suppose I felt I had to try a bit harder to be delinquent. I went to the local grammar school for boys; there was a separate grammar school for girls opposite, and I can’t say I really enjoyed it.

I left with three “A” levels but didn’t want to go to university; it was 1962, a very exciting time and I headed for Europe to be a beatnik, hitch-hiking around and getting odd jobs. I briefly met Pablo Picasso that year in the south of France and spent time in Paris trying to become a Left Bank intellectual. Soon London began to “swing”, and I had various short term jobs in London, in an advertising agency and working in a gallery on the Kings Road, that sort of thing. I wasn’t really thinking about what I wanted to do. I was just living for the day, but eventually the thought coalesced that I might become a writer. To that end I enrolled in a teacher training college in Winchester (now the University), thinking that I could be like William Golding and write books in the long school holidays. They quickly saw through me at the college and I left after the first year. However, I stayed in Winchester as I had made many friends there, mostly at the art school. It was an experimental time for art schools, which were in their heyday. Brian Eno was there, and he did his fine art degree show in sound rather than in the plastic arts. It was a good city and I enjoyed living there. Eventually I had the idea of starting a tutorial college with a group of tutors, and I rented a house outside of Winchester where we started tutoring teenagers that had been excluded from their schools, and helping them get through their “A” levels. It became very successful, and after two years I moved the college into Winchester. We were tutoring teenagers, mostly from independent schools from all over the UK, providing them with individual tuition and getting them to university.

By now I had married. My wife was from Bridport, and we would come down to visit her family; while I was out on a walk around the area, I came across Symondsbury Manor which had been empty for some time and was romantically overgrown. I think it was 1975, the time of the oil crisis and three-day week, so quite a few houses had become too expensive for their owners to keep up. I completely fell in love with it, and although the college was going well in Winchester and everyone told me it would be financial suicide to move it to Bridport, I didn’t listen; I managed to raise a business loan, sell the Winchester property, and bought it. That was thirty-five years ago, and I have lived here ever since. Originally I moved down here with Ros and John Higgins, good friends of ours. John, who was a builder, and I undertook the restoration together. Nowadays we let one end of the house for country house weekends and weddings, and we live in the other.

For another five years I kept a tutorial college going in Winchester which I used to visit once a week. Then I opened a study centre in France, and in the 1980’s, with a group of Art School lecturers, I started the West Dorset Art School, also in Symondsbury. I can’t say that the Art School was a great success. We weren’t able to get accreditation to offer BA’s; we were much too small and so it became difficult attracting students. We changed the Art School eventually into studios and low cost accommodation for artists and that proved very popular. Many of them came to Symondsbury, found their feet here, and then decided to stay on in Bridport, and I think this may well have contributed to the area now having such a thriving art scene.

In 2003 I noticed that the Palace in Bridport was up for sale, and I was looking for a new project. Again it was really the building that attracted me, I just wanted to restore it; I wasn’t really looking to run a cinema particularly. Once again, friends in the entertainment business told me it would be financial suicide (this time they were pretty much right). I got it open and re-decorated eventually and the interior now looks splendid thanks to the help of friends who rose to the challenge of painting fresh pictures on the large empty panels around the auditorium. I ran it for a while but it needed a younger hand at the helm. It’s tremendously difficult to make a venue succeed without any financial support from the Arts Council. Fortunately first my son Gideon and now Gabby volunteered to run it and it’s now it’s a great success. We are getting good audiences which have given us the confidence to put on top acts. Amongst the performers, the Bridport audience is becoming famous for the appreciation and response it shows to comedy and music. Well known artistes are keen to come to Bridport even though it’s a relatively small venue for them. They like the town and they like The Electric Palace. I am still the “eminence gris” behind it, and I give it my support, but I’m not so involved in the day to day running of it, which is a great relief.

I have always painted; it’s really my abiding interest and a lot of my friends are successful painters. I’ve got hundreds of my canvases stacked in the attic. They’re not as good as I want them to be but I like the process of creating pictures. I don’t think it’s important to exhibit them but I have, this year, had an exhibition in Dublin- really my first. The paintings are homage to James Joyce, and were exhibited during Bloomsday. That was great and they are about to be reviewed in The Irish Times. I should paint more than I do but I just can’t resist exciting schemes and trying to make ventures work. I believe there is a lot of creativity in building a business if it is approached in much the same way as making a work of art.

Bridport is an extraordinary town and I hope it will manage to hang on to its unique atmosphere. There are fewer and fewer towns that still have independent butchers, bakers and greengrocers in the profusion that we have. Our small shops, combined with the multitude of junk shops, artists’ studios and of course, the market stalls, make it a vibrant place to live. Hopefully, the Electric Palace contributes to this and I believe that as long as Bridport can foster its character, it can thrive. The town is getting frequent mentions nowadays in the national press because of its creative scene and its “lifestyle and scenery”. It’s difficult to impress the value of this upon the local authorities and I wish that the town planners would do more to support the small shops and individual businesses through this present recession, rather than allowing chain stores to homogenise our town, as has happened in so many other places. I am very encouraged by the terrific audiences we are getting at the Electric Palace; to me they demonstrate the true spirit of Bridport in all its diversity and enthusiasm.”