The arrival of the Circus was one of the highpoints of our Summer! Rumours as to the possible date circulated among us kids for weeks before at long last somebody spied the colourful notice tacked up on the Town Noticeboard outside the Town Crier’s cottage! Within a half hour, it seemed almost everyone knew all about it!
That same evening Enoch Langford, resplendent in his full Town Crier’s uniform and ringing his great bell at each stopping point, circled the town as he proclaimed;
“O Yeh! Oh Yeh! Oh Yeh! The circus is coming to town this week and will be performing their magnificent spectacle under the Big Top on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening!”
Those approaching circus performances consumed our thoughts and conversations throughout the entire week! The thrills began on Monday or Tuesday when the circus paraded through the town to their site In the field at the corner of Barrow Street opposite the Gasworks.
If we were lucky it was a school holiday or their arrival was later in the day! Alas, sometimes we missed the Parade and then our only recourse was gawking over the closed Circus field gate every evening!
To have the chance to watch the parade itself was a tremendous thrill!
A stunningly beautiful lady bedecked in sequined satin and performing tricks as she ‘rode’ a magnificent white horse, led the Parade. She was followed by a large Calliope complete with a monkey blaring a mixture of music and advertising for the upcoming shows. Clowns of all shapes and sizes danced their way among the circus folk and onlookers handing out invitations to everyone they could reach!
A cage of monkeys chattered and bounced along. The lions in their travelling cage could be heard long before they came into view and, at least one year, there was a tiger!
Elaborate costumes bedecked the large troupe of horses and their riders. The Trapeze Artists turned cartwheels and standing somersaults along the way! The performing dogs walked on two legs and played leap-frog around their master! They were as different from our working farm dogs as chalk from cheese!
Jugglers and other solo performers filled any gaps between the wagons and finally, the ponderous, yet amazingly soft footed elephants marked the end of the Parade. Every year there were at least three elephants and occasionally a baby elephant would be tagging along. Their handler rode atop the leading beast seated gracefully behind those huge ears. How we hoped we would see him dismount as this was achieved by the elephant gracefully wrapping his trunk around his rider’s waist and lowering him to the ground.
Ignoring the plethora of horse drawn waggons and lorries containing the circus folk’s homes and equipment which trailed behind, we tagged along behind the elephants all the way to the gasworks field. There, Sergeant Dodd stopped us at the gate! Until we returned to see the show we could only watch from afar! Alas, that first evening there was not much real action as the circus folk were busy setting up their homes and settling the animals in for the week.
During the following days, it was very different! If we were extraordinarily lucky we would be hanging over the gate at precisely that wonderful moment when the Big Top Tent was raised! It was magical to watch those huge elephants walking slowly backwards as they hauled up ‘The Big Top’! Performers frequently practised their acts beside their wagons and of course, the animals had to be exercised and fed!
Saturday afternoon arrived at last and we all queued with our sixpences, hoping to get ‘the best seat in the house’. Some kids wanted to be in the front row! I liked to be further back on the tiered seating, high enough to see everything, too far back to be pressured into joining in any of the acts!
The seating was merely tiered mostly backless benches, sets of which formed a horseshoe shape around the show ring with the large flamboyant Performer Entrance and the Calliope completing the circle.
The tent itself seemed huge and alive with colour and music. In its centre, the show ring was enclosed with brightly painted boards about 2 ½ feet high and its floor covered with sawdust. High above stretched the high wire act ropes and swing.
Suddenly the lights dimmed, a booming fanfare rang out and the show had begun! A kaleidoscope of colour, tricks and raucous music tumbled before our enchanted eyes. We saw jugglers, tumblers, performing dogs and horses follow each other with such rapidity that they seemed but a flash in time. The high wire acts were incredible, the elephants so clever and the miniature ponies delightful to watch as they tiptoed delicately about the ring.
The biggest thrill of all came near the end when the lions in their large show cage appeared. The ‘Lion-Tamer’, (that’s what we called him) cracked his whip as he walked among those great beasts. On command, they sat on stools, jumped over one another, rolled over and even allowed the Lion Tamer to put his head in their great jaws.
All too soon our circus was over for another year but those wonderful memories remained with us and with time probably grew far beyond the reality of what we had really seen!
Were our circuses spectacular? We thought so! Certainly, they were our only chance to see lions, tigers, monkeys and elephants or even acrobats! In those days before television, Internet, and even quality colour animal magazines, the ‘Just So Stories’ illustrations or small black and white drawings or prints often represented our total exotic animal knowledge.
Those small travelling circuses gave us country children a wider perception of the world beyond our shores, and a glimpse of a very different life style.