Nostalgia reigns
supreme as this film brings back memories of one of the last fairs
to be held at the old Market Ground in Blackburn Town Centre. The
year was 1960, and the fair's days on that unique site were
numbered. Blackburn Arts Club decided that it should be recorded for
posterity. There is an underlying boy-meets-girl theme, interwoven
with meeting real-life fair folk like Mrs Prudie Shaw, who shows us
around her superb Brayshaw living wagon.
The film opens with the Town Council
resolution to permit the fair, and continues through the planning
stages and marking out of the Market Square, the pull-on and
building up. It records the official mayoral inspection and follows
our young couple through daytime and night time on the fair. It also
shows the final stages of pull-down and departure. There is coverage
of the Pot Fair which always accompanied the main fair.
Three bonus items of short clips
and a photo gallery of 38 superb images of the fair from 1921
onward, complete the DVD.
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