TRAVELLING circuses have been welcomed in Liskeard for nearly 200 years, but August 1860 was a notable exception.

This was a time of the conflict between Britain and China known as The Opium Wars, and the Cornish Times reported that a visit from ‘Bell’s Great Hippodrome’ was believed to be extremely inappropriate; ‘This celebrated Hippodrome and Chinese Circus will visit Liskeard and perform in a monster tent on Friday next [August 24, 1860]. The company are to be heralded by a Chinese procession on coming into the town, a rather impudent thing just now, when we are not on the best of terms with [the Chinese]’.

Included under ‘Engagements & Amusements This Day’ in the Western Morning News of May 25, 1871 is ‘Powell, Foottit and Clarke’s Circus at Liskeard’. The circus travelled all over England before establishing a permanent site in Manchester; Powell and Clarke were equestrians and Foottit was a clown named ‘Funny Foottit’. The partnership was dissolved six weeks after the performance in Liskeard, Foottit had become an alcoholic and died in 1875 in his 37th year. Powell and Clarke continued working and travelling together in Ireland.

May 1893 saw two separate circus companies visiting Liskeard. The first was Bostock, Woobwell and Bailey’s menagerie and circus who gave two performances on Tuesday, May 16, in a field belonging to Mr John Cleave of the Stag Hotel. The Western Morning News reported that ‘The large audiences by their applause, gave great sign of their appreciation of the skill of the acrobats, riders, and tight-rope walkers. Miss Fawcett, a young lady of twelve summers, for bare-back riding was loudly applauded’.

Ginnett’s Circus was the second to appear in Liskeard in May 1893, on Saturday, May 20. A Frenchman named Jean Paul Ginnett started in showbusiness with his pony and budgerigar show in Ludgate Circus, London and was one of Britain’s largest circuses by the time he came to Liskeard. The circus closed during WWI when Ginnett’s 200 horses were confiscated by the War Office and shipped to France.

On June 5, 1903 it was reported ‘Fossett’s Circus visited Liskeard on Whit Monday with a thoroughly up-to-date programme and met with good business’. Nearly 50 years later, in June 1952, ‘Sir Robert Fossett’s Mammoth Jungle Circus were back in Liskeard, at the Circus Field, Station Road’. They advertised as ‘The Greatest Collection of Wild Animals ever to Tour this Country’ with two performances each day, the best seats cost 5s 6d for children and 10s 6d for adults. The zoo was open daily from 11am to 3pm, admission 6d. The advance booking office was James T Lethbridge, Barras Street, Liskeard.

Fossett’s animals would have arrived in railway wagons at Liskeard Station, then made their way in procession along Station Road to ‘Circus Field’, now the site of Rapson’s Field Car Parks. Elephants were part of the procession that passed the Old Stag Hotel, so perhaps this week’s photograph was taken on that June day in 1952. Can any reader confirm that?

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