As part of the Gerald Reece archive material from the great local historian’s collection, I last weekend featured a large gallery of photos of the 1988 Brownhills Carnival Parade, actually taken by Gerald’s son Gary for a local authority project.

Today, I complete that set with some images taken the same day, but of the fairground and fun in Holland Park later that day.

The funfair usually arrived in Holland Park the week before the carnival, and gradually set up, running from the Thursday evening until the Saturday, and was always a huge draw for local kids and adults alike.

There are very clear pictures here of a carnival in it’s heyday, that sit well alongside Peter Booth’s set from the late 1970s, the Roy Craddock 1972 carnival set recently featured here via Peter Booth and also the 1934 film by Edgar Pritchard. There is of course also material from old pals of the blog Dawn Hayton and several great posts from Lisa Ashby.

I feel sure there must be loads of people you folk will recognise here – and people must recognise the Carnival Queen and her attendants. Interestingly, nobody seems to have recognised them yet.

These remarkable images have been very generously supplied by the great local historian himself, and beautifuly scanned by the wonderful David Evans for blog readers to enjoy.

I thank Gerald and David for yet another remarkable set – you are a very wonderful and generous gentlemen.

The donor of these remarkable images, Gerald Reece is of course a talented and superlative local historian, indeed now resident in Devon, who wrote the seminal work ‘Brownhills – A walk into history’ upon which this blog stands.

What do you recall from this gallery? If you have any thoughts or questions, please do share them – comment here, find me on social media or mail me: BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com. Thanks.