'Merry-go-round' is also current here, or was, when I was a child, and may still be. I associate it with older people, though - parents and grandparents. To us kids, among ourselves, the term was always 'roundabout'. That may have been partly regional, of course.
I have just found a great website, with pictures and a historical account of the roundabout that comes to Loughborough:
http://www.nca-usa.org/psp/NoyceGallopers/
It is not quite as old as I imagined it might have been - I think the steam carousels arrived in the 1870s - but, built in 1890, it is quite old enough, and very fine.
The site has lots of photos of North American carousels:
http://www.nca-usa.org/psp/index.html
I don't know if maybe it includes the one you knew as a child.
The first time I went to Pinner Fair, there was one small, shabby children's roundabout that was powered manually. If I am not mistaken, the man in charge turned a wheel to give me and my brother our ride. I don't recall the details of the mechanism; cogs, cranks and belts must have been involved, since as I recall the wheel was vertical; all the same, it must have been hard work! The horses were small, painted or varnished dark brown, with sisal tails. They were suspended from some kind of circular frame. It was a slow ride.
At the age of five, I wasn't very impressed, being keener on the fast powered rides, with piped music; my brother and I went on the ride because it caught my parents' antiquarian interest. Also, my father felt sorry for the owner, who was looking rather downcast; his shabby, slow machine was getting very little custom.
That was more than fifty years ago (a reflection that bewilders me, since I do not feel that old). I have never seen a roundabout like it since, and I think it must have been a late survival of an older age of fairground machinery, much less glamourous than the steam carousels.
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Date: November 15th, 2008 03:26 pm (UTC)I have just found a great website, with pictures and a historical account of the roundabout that comes to Loughborough:
http://www.nca-usa.org/psp/NoyceGallopers/
It is not quite as old as I imagined it might have been - I think the steam carousels arrived in the 1870s - but, built in 1890, it is quite old enough, and very fine.
The site has lots of photos of North American carousels:
http://www.nca-usa.org/psp/index.html
I don't know if maybe it includes the one you knew as a child.
The first time I went to Pinner Fair, there was one small, shabby children's roundabout that was powered manually. If I am not mistaken, the man in charge turned a wheel to give me and my brother our ride. I don't recall the details of the mechanism; cogs, cranks and belts must have been involved, since as I recall the wheel was vertical; all the same, it must have been hard work! The horses were small, painted or varnished dark brown, with sisal tails. They were suspended from some kind of circular frame. It was a slow ride.
At the age of five, I wasn't very impressed, being keener on the fast powered rides, with piped music; my brother and I went on the ride because it caught my parents' antiquarian interest. Also, my father felt sorry for the owner, who was looking rather downcast; his shabby, slow machine was getting very little custom.
That was more than fifty years ago (a reflection that bewilders me, since I do not feel that old). I have never seen a roundabout like it since, and I think it must have been a late survival of an older age of fairground machinery, much less glamourous than the steam carousels.