Farewell to the Funfair

Every year Porthcawl funfair was a ten month-long working class eisteddfod. But in early October 2025, after one hundred years in many incarnations, it closed for the last time.

To celebrate its influence on the lives of so many people, we held a Fanfare for the Funfair on November 6, 2025 – a celebration in the Hi Tide, on the edge of the old fairground.

This included readings from ‘Fairground Music’, a full colour book of texts and photographs by Robert Minhinnick and Eamon Bourke, published by Gomer Press.

This book is on sale from SUSSED at £12, with all monies going to the shop and charity.

Also, a screening of Eamon and Lucy Bourke’s 30 minute film, ‘Coney Beach’. This was the first opportunity for many people who attended the Fanfare to meet again once familiar fairground characters.

The Fanfare was attended by Porthcawl’s mayor, Elen Jones, who spoke of the resort’s ambitious regeneration plans.

Those plans include demolition of the fairground, which many regret. This is an irreplaceable world which has been the genesis for much writing, photography, film and general excitement. Literally hundreds of thousands of people – could it be more than that? - have passed through the fairground gates.

Thus it was excellent on November 6 to return to the Ghost Train, a section of the ‘Coney Beach’ film.

A significant element of the Fanfare was the provision of cards to the audience, so that memories of the fairground could be written down.

These include remembrance of Steve, ‘the doughnut man’ (working on the last day of all), who was “always a gentleman to customers and staff.”

(Recordings of that last fairground day were made and incorporated within the Fanfare).

As part of the fairground memories, unnamed individuals recall “chucking my cockles and whelks from the prom on to old people sleeping in their deckchairs on the beach below…often landing in their open mouths.”

And “the water chute and the ghost train and the smell of donuts, round ring ones, warm with sugar! Yum!”

And “Noisy…boisterous fun. Sneaking on to rides, screaming girls, lovely smells. Hot dogs, candy floss’.”

Sian Photo — Sian Williams at the Fanfare

And “it was a wonderful, magical fair, to me as a child born in Porthcawl. From where I lived and grew up…we could hear the music. So many special rides.”

There are many more. (Read the gallery of memories at the base of this page).

The Fanfare included music, design and photography from Peter Morgan and Richard Thomas of Sustainable Wales.

A Final August - one of the films shown at the Fanfare.

Some echoes of the Fanfare will occur again during our Green Room, Friday, November 28, 8pm.