Tag Archives: Quay Street

Eileen Smith: Funfair, Carnivals 1920s, 1930s

Fair Arrival at Yarmouth, Steam driven

Fair Arrival at Yarmouth, Steam driven

The Fun Fair

Arnolds Fun Fair came to the Island for August, with 3 big traction engines, brought on the barges towed by the tug Jumsey.

The Jumsey towed the wooden barges to the Quay and the biggest traction engine, the ‘Island Chief’  was the first off, and parked in front of the Harbour master and Customs Office ( which is now the Lifeboat shop). Big wedges of wood were put under the back wheels  and a hawser was hitched to the wagons. One by one they were pulled out of the tow barges by the Island Chief. When all were out on dry land, Mr Arnold drove the traction engine and  three wagons up Quay Street, across the Square  and up the High Street.

Island chief, traction engine

Island chief, traction engine

The other engines and wagons and lorries would follow, causing all sorts of disruption in the High Street, which was the only road in and out of Yarmouth.

 When the Funfair set up in Yarmouth, it was on the Recreation Ground which was given for the children of Yarmouth. There would be gallopers, chairplanes, dodgems and swing boats; proper coconut shies and all kinds of stalls. It cost 1d in the afternoon, 3d in the evening. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

Eileen Smith: Shops 1920s, 1930s

In the town there were 27 shops, 1 fish and chip shop on the corner of South Street and Tennyson Road, 1 garage in Quay Street ( now the Pharmacy),  4 pubs and hotels and 2 chimney sweeps, Mr. Chambers and Mr. Holloway. There were 4 grocers shops – one in Station Road, Mr. Cook’s – later Mr. Burt’s -, one now called Sixpenny Corner owned by Mr. Barnett, Harry Mills in the Square, and Higginbothams. There were coupons given with Bourneville Cocoa and such like. My mother collected enough to get me a wooden pencil box at the Sixpenny Corner shop.
If you took an egg with you when you went to Batchelor’s for chips, they’d cook that for you too. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

Shops: Square 1930s with Harwoods van

Shops: Square 1930s with Harwoods van

Eileen Smith: Shops in Yarmouth 1930s, 1940s

In the town there were 27 shops, 1 fish and chip shop on the corner of South Street and Tennyson Road, 1 garage in Quay Street ( now the Pharmacy),  4 pubs and hotels and 2 chimney sweeps, Mr. Chambers and Mr. Holloway. There were 4 grocers shops – one in Station Road, Mr. Cook’s – later Mr. Burt’s -, one now called Sixpenny Corner owned by Mr. Barnett, Harry Mills in the Square, and Higginbothams. There were coupons given with Bourneville Cocoa and such like. My mother collected enough to get me a wooden pencil box at the Sixpenny Corner shop.
If you took an egg with you when you went to Batchelor’s for chips, they’d cook that for you too. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

Colin Smith: Early Days

I started off in Quay Street in a house in one of those little passages that go across. Then we went to live in the harbour aboard a boat called ‘ The Tina’, a sixty footer, and whether that caused my mother to be poorly I don’t know.  She went into Havenstreet for a while with ‘consumption’ as it was known in those days, and then up to Scotland, and I, being the youngest of the brood, I went up there with her and attended school up there for a while.  That was a sad business, but there it was. Colin Smith b 1922