Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 18 May 1894

Local Holiday Attractions

Little of the holiday-making of Whitsuntide has been confined to our own neighbourhood. The majority of holiday-makers availed themselves of the numerous cheap trips that on a Bank Holiday are as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa, to employ a time-worn simile, and betook themselves and their money to distant towns where it benefited tradesmen while our own might have handled it.

It is natural that at holiday time the people of this district, which has certainly little to recommend it as a holiday resort, should seek change of air and scene, but at the same time the fact remains that many people only go elsewhere because of the absence of suitable attractions at home.

At one or two of the towns and villages of the locality an attempt was made to provide entertainment for the masses of hard-working people in the neighbourhood, but generally speaking the amusements were inadequate and not sufficiently exciting or attractive to serve their purpose.

At Denaby and Wombwell there were what by a polite fiction it is customary to regard as pleasure fairs and which principally consist of a steam hurdy-gurdy, a hideous contrivance that would frighten rather than entertain the jaded working man or woman, a shooting gallery, which form of entertainment can at any time be equalled in a backyard with a pop-gun, and a cocoa-nut shy, which appeals to callow youth and childhood more than to staid and sober manhood.

Fifty such “pleasure fairs” would be more likely to depopulate the town or village than cause its inhabitants to remain and partake of its delights. So far as we know the remaining local attractions of the holiday consisted of one or two cricket matches and a couple of gatherings for athletic sports.

At one of these—Darfield—there was for the greater part of the afternoon comparatively little else for the spectator to do but to indulge his taste for drink, if he possessed any, while of the quality of the sport to be witnessed when a start was made with it, the least said is likeliest to be soonest mended. Nor were the attractions of the other meeting, at Piccadilly, of the highest order.

Here it is true a more successful attempt had been made to provide public amusement, yet the sports were not such that a man with a family would remain to see while the chances of a cheap excursion to Cleethorpes offered themselves.

And what we desire to know is why the people of this district cannot be entertained at home. Let the towns of Mexborough, Swinton, Wath, and Wombwell be taken for examples, and surely something can be provided for the public enjoyment better than a merry-go-round and a sprint handicap for a prize of five pounds.

The initial difficulty lies in the fact that, with the exception of Conisborough, not one town in the neighbourhood has an object of interest or curiosity which can be regarded as an attraction. But they might have. Let the public authorities provide the people with a park—land is not that dear—and the provision of an open space would remove the greatest difficulty which exists to prevent the people of the neighbourhood being entertained at home instead of crowding in thousands to enrich those elsewhere.

If each of the towns that have been mentioned had its public park it would be a secondary consideration to provide the inhabitants with amusement that would keep them at home at holiday times, while owing to the constant facilities for exercise and recreation afforded, they would be tempted less to join the army of cheap trippers that evacuate industrial centres whenever a holiday occurs.

But who would not seek the seaside and run the risk of being victimised by those who lay in wait for the cheap tripper when there is nothing more elevating or entertaining at home than the sight of factory or colliery chimneys, or the alternative glare, bray, and abomination of the modern horror, the “pleasure fair.”