20/08/2026
🎡 FAIRGROUND ATTRACTION: BEFORE THE RIDES
Original Research And Writing © MerseyBiz 2026
Today we can take a photograph, record a video and send it around the world in seconds. Go back to the earliest chapter of the Wallis story and photography itself was part of the newest technology of its day. Before the great engines, before the wooden horses, before Waltzers, Dodgems and rollercoasters, the family were already learning something that would run through their story for generations. How to make people stop and look. 📸
Adventure Coast Southport traces Norman Wallis’s ancestors back to travelling photographers who moved from Spitalfields in London to Liverpool during the nineteenth century. The University of Sheffield’s National Fairground and Circus Archive independently records the Wallis family moving to Merseyside during the 1840s. Photography was still developing rapidly. There were no phones filled with thousands of family pictures, and for many people having a photograph taken remained an occasion in itself. A travelling photographic booth could give somebody the chance to sit before a camera and take a lasting image home. 🎞️
By 1883, the National Fairground and Circus Archive records Wallis’ Amusements as an established amusement business. Its early travelling world included stalls and sideshows, together with photographic booths. Then another remarkable technology became part of the Wallis story. Moving pictures. 🎪
Adventure Coast records the Wallis family as early adopters of the bioscope. So what exactly was a bioscope? In simple terms, it belonged to the pioneering world of cinema. Film was passed through a machine and moving pictures were projected onto a screen for an audience to watch. Before permanent cinemas became the familiar experience later generations knew, travelling showmen could take moving pictures directly to the public. People who had grown accustomed to still photographs could suddenly watch figures walking, vehicles moving and scenes unfolding before them. 🎥
The Sheffield archive also records bioscopes among the Wallis travelling attractions. It gives us a fascinating progression. A family involved in capturing people in still photographs was also embracing technology that could make pictures move. The equipment changed, but the basic challenge remained the same. Give the crowd something new enough to make them stop. ✨
🌊 DID YOU KNOW?
Southport was developing rapidly during this same nineteenth century world. Southport Pier opened in 1860 and Sefton Council records it as the first iron pleasure pier in the country. While travelling entertainment was changing, Southport itself was growing into the seaside destination that generations of visitors would come to know. That connection between visitors, entertainment and the seaside would become increasingly important as our story moves forward. 🌊
Technology continued to move and public tastes moved with it. The Sheffield archive records that the Wallis business gradually expanded into rides, with members of the family making and decorating some attractions themselves and professional carvers sometimes brought in to add further detail. Photography had been followed by moving pictures. Now machinery was beginning to open another completely different chapter. ⚙️
And this is where we stop for now. Before the roar of the great engines. Before the lights reflected across the fairground at night. Before generations of families came to know the Wallis name through the rides themselves. We have reached the point where the cameras and moving pictures begin giving way to machines, and where the people behind the Wallis story start stepping properly into view. 🎠
The people become clearer. The engines arrive. The rides begin to turn. And a family already accustomed to travelling, adapting and entertaining a crowd is about to enter an entirely new age.
To be continued...
The accompanying image is an AI interpretation created for this opening chapter and is not presented as a historical photograph.
Sources Used: Adventure Coast Southport official family history. University of Sheffield National Fairground and Circus Archive. Sefton Council historical and conservation material.
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