WITH THE ADVENT of powered flight in the early years of the twentieth century, aerial rides had a particular grip on the public’s imagination, as highlighted by a 1909 guide to the White City, Manchester, describing its Aeroflyte ride:
If there is one subject in which the world is at the present time more interested than another, it is the problem of conquering the air and making of man to fly as the birds. Every civilised nation has the subject under consideration as a war measure and nearly every civilised individual has it under consideration as a new form of pleasure or diversion. Ballooning has been an expensive but favourite form of pleasure for years, and now that man has made the balloon dirigible and subject to his will in its movements, he has turned to the aeroplane as even more of a means of sure conquering of the air, and recent developments seem to justify the idea. Every man would like to enjoy even for a moment the supposed sensational trip through the air, and when opportunity offers it is never rejected. It is not possible for many in these days to obtain this opportunity, but the next best thing that is offered them is a short flight on some contrivance or mechanism that will produce similar sensations to those that come from the real article.
The Aeroflyte was a revolving chair-ride that was based on the Circle Swing, designed by Harry Traver in New York in 1901. A similar ride, known as the Aerial Flight, was erected on the Birnbeck Pier at Weston-super-Mare and gave its customers a thrilling ride, partly over the sea. Similar rides were built at the Southend Kursaal, Whitley Bay Spanish City, and the Sunny Vale Pleasure Gardens at Hipperholme, near Halifax. A smaller version of the ride, known as the Chair-o-Plane, can still be seen at some travelling fairgrounds.
Two of the more unusual Aerial Flight rides were operated by Thomas Warwick at Douglas and Cleethorpes, using former revolving observation towers. These, known as Warwick’s Revolving Towers, consisted of a 150-foot-high steel tower around which a platform revolved to the top. Customers then had the option of stepping out on to a podium at the top of the tower before returning in the car to the bottom. The towers combined the attractions of a small, cheap Blackpool Tower and those of a revolving amusement ride, and were invented by a part-time American Methodist preacher, Jesse Lake. London-born engineer Thomas Warwick led the campaign to erect a number of the towers at British seaside resorts, and they were built at Great Yarmouth, Morecambe, Scarborough, Southend-on-Sea (erected by Thomas Warwick’s brother William), Douglas and Cleethorpes (this was the re-erected Morecambe tower). However, apart from at Great Yarmouth, the towers proved not to be as successful as anticipated and in 1906 Warwick converted those at Douglas and Cleethorpes into flying-machine rides. These consisted of passenger cars resembling boats fixed at the end of chains attached to the former tower lift car. As the platform revolved halfway up the tower, the boats flew out at an angle. The Douglas tower lasted only a few months as a flying-machine ride before it was destroyed by fire, and the Cleethorpes ride lasted only until 1909. The last of the towers, at Great Yarmouth, survived until 1941.
An advertisement postcard for the Airships (otherwise known as the Aerial Flight) on the Birnbeck Pier at Weston-super-Mare, which flew its customers partially over the sea. The ride operated between 1908 and 1914.
The Flip-Flap was the centrepiece amusement of the Franco-British Exhibition at White City, London, in 1908 and took its customers to a height of 150 feet on two gigantic steel arms, which crossed over at the top. The ride seems never to have been relocated anywhere else in the United Kingdom.
A postcard view taken from the top of the water chute showing the amusements on the Birnbeck Pier at Weston-super-Mare c. 1912. The Aerial Flight can be seen in action, and also visible are the switchback railway and Hurry Skurry.
The Warwick Revolving Tower at Southend-on-Sea operated between 1898 and 1905. The ride was so named because Thomas Warwick had acquired the patent to erect them in the United Kingdom, where six were constructed at seaside resorts.
Most of the Warwick Revolving Towers were commercial failures, and in 1906 the Cleethorpes tower was converted into an Aerial Flight ride, as seen on this postcard. The ride lasted only three years before the tower was demolished.
The Hiram Maxim Flying Machine was erected at Crystal Palace in 1904 and on this postcard can be seen rotating in front of the Palace.
Warwick’s flying-machine rides were a pale imitation of the Maxim captive flying machine, the brainchild of the brilliant American inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim. He had arrived in Britain in 1881 as the chief engineer of Thomas Edison’s United States Electric Company and developed the Maxim machine gun, which by 1891 was used by every battalion of the British Army. Maxim then concentrated his inventive mind on powered flight and constructed a large flying machine weighing 3.5 tons, with a wingspan of 104 feet, and a 362-horsepower steam engine powering propellers front and back. The machine was placed on a railway track half a mile long in Baldwyn’s Park, Dartford, Kent, and on 31 July 1894 it was powered along the line. Breaking free of the restraining rods, Maxim’s aeroplane flew for 600 yards before crashing to the ground, where it was damaged beyond repair. Undeterred, Maxim continued with his flying experiments and designed the Maxim captive flying-machine ride, which was placed at Earl’s Court in the spring of 1904. The ride had a steel pole 62 feet high, from which supporting arms held carriages on wires. As the machine revolved, the carriages spread outwards to a diameter of 66 feet. The ride was an instant success, and Maxim formed a company to install others at Blackpool, Southport, New Brighton and Crystal Palace. The Blackpool machine is still operating today and is the oldest surviving ride at the Pleasure Beach.
The Aerial Slide was a basic ride on which riders slid along a slack wire on a pulley just above the ground for a distance of about 100 yards. One was erected at Blackpool’s Raikes Hall and Royal Palace Gardens in 1888, and another around six years later on the sands at South Shore (this survived into the early Pleasure Beach era). Others were found on the beach at Cleethorpes, the North Promenade at Skegness, and the Summer and Palace Gardens at Rhyl. The Aerial Slide was quickly superseded at amusement parks by more sophisticated rides, but can still be found in children’s play areas and adventure parks under its modern name of the ‘zipwire’.
A more sophisticated form of the Aerial Slide was the Aerial Flight (not to be confused with the flying-machine ride of the same name). This postcard shows the one that traversed the Marine Lake at Southport between 1895 and 1911. The water chute and Hiram Maxim Flying Machine can also be seen.
The Aerial Flight (a term also used for some flying-machine rides) took the Aerial Slide to a higher level by placing its customers in gondolas suspended on twin wires at a much greater distance from the ground. One was built in 1889 at the pleasure gardens at Shipley Glen, West Yorkshire, and survived until 1920. Another was erected at Southport in 1895, carrying its customers across the Marine Lake. However, it was taken down in 1911 because residents complained that it spoiled the view from the promenade.
The Aerial Slide was a very basic ride, on which riders travelled along a slack wire on a pulley. This postcard from c. 1905 shows the one on the beach at Cleethorpes.
The London Eye (originally known as the Millennium Wheel) was opened in March 2000 and is Britain’s most popular charged-for attraction, visited by over 3.5 million people each year. The wheel stands 442 feet high and weighs over 2,000 tonnes.
Cartwright’s Great Wheel on the beach at Skegness was not as big as the wheel at Blackpool. Nevertheless, judging from this postcard, it was a popular attraction in its own right.
The most enduring of the aerial rides is the big wheel (otherwise known as the Ferris wheel), which has become a prominent attraction in recent years in cities such as London, Manchester, Liverpool and Plymouth.
A primitive type of ‘pleasure wheel’ was developed at fairs in Europe in the late eighteenth century, and in 1867 Isaac Newton Forrester obtained the first patent to build them in the United States. In 1891 William Somers opened a wooden wheel on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City and was invited to erect a wheel for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. However, this never came about, and George Ferris achieved fame by designing and giving his name to a large steel wheel for the exhibition. It was 250 feet in diameter, powered by two 1,000-horsepower steam engines, and had thirty-six suspended cars, each holding sixty passengers, who paid 50 cents each. The success of the Ferris wheel inspired the British engineer William Bassett to build a large wheel for the Oriental Exhibition at Earl’s Court in 1895. In the following year the Winter Gardens in Blackpool commissioned Bassett to build a wheel, which opened in August 1896, when four thousand passengers rode on it in the first two hours of its operation. The wheel had a diameter of 220 feet and thirty large carriages, which could hold up to nine hundred passengers. The axle around which the wheel revolved weighed 36 tons. One of the carriages was laid out as a tearoom for private parties, whilst another had a ping-pong table. The wheel cost about £50,000 but proved to be unprofitable, and in 1916 it was sold to the Winter Gardens Company for only £3,913. They continued to operate the ride until it was demolished after the final trip on 28 October 1928. The carriages were sold off as garden sheds and café premises, and some of the metalwork was melted down for souvenir medals.
The Rainbow Wheel’s passenger car remained on the ground while the covering of illuminated scenes revolved. This one stood at Blackpool Pleasure Beach between 1912 and 1935.
The Rainbow Wheel resembled a small Ferris wheel, but the passenger car never actually moved: it was the covering of illuminated scenes that revolved, giving the riders the impression of travelling through tunnels, under bridges and over mountains. There was a Rainbow Wheel was in place at Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach between 1912 and 1935, and another was built at Whitley Bay’s Spanish City in 1914.
The cover of an inter-war guide to the Dreamland amusement park in Margate, featuring, in the background, the scenic railway built in 1920. The park was opened that year on the site of a pleasure garden and menagerie known as the Hall-by-the-Sea.