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Gallery 13 - Start of the Season
Until the recent deluge of Valentines Day fairs,
populating the city centres for the purpose of catching the half-term
school holidays, King's Lynn Mart Fair signalled the start of the
travelling season. The importance of the fair transcended its role
as the season opener for the showmen, and became a fixture of celebration
in the north Norfolk region. The images below show the sheer mass
of crowd and excitement that accompanied the official opening of
the fair.
With the important fairground manufacturing company
Savages based at King's Lynn, the fair often allowed machines of
the late 19th Century to make spectacular debuts. This was the era
of excessive carved and ornate decoration, a time when eloquence
and grandiosity formed the basis of a decorative aesthetic, well
in advance of the popular culture themes that began to dominate
in the mass consumerist society of the post 1950s. It flourished
in a time when the fair offered a fleeting experience of things
that were totally new - the chance to view moving images, to ride
in a car, to experience a trip in a Venetian gondola.
Royal visitors in 1955.
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