National Fairground Archive

Inlcudes a history of fairs and catalogue of archives held. section of the website provides a guide to the physical content of the National Fairground Archive. It is our long-term intention to provide a fully searchable on-line guide to all the content of the NFA with direct links to digital objects such as photographic images, items of ephemera and larger plans and posters. At present we have listings pages and finding aids for material by both FORMAT TYPE and NAMED COLLECTION. Books and journals are listed as dedicated collections as both of these have specific on-line finding aids. Collections are listed as an A-Z by both title and content. Our themed subject access points provide links to in-house indexes and articles around the major subject themes within our collection development policy. This section of the web-site is a work in progress. A collection acquired by the NFA, through donation or otherwise, may consist of a number of format types across a number of subject areas consistent with our Collection Development Plan. Generally a collection consists of a variety of format types, and we always separate books and journals and list these separately in our on-line searchable catalogues. Remaining items are then given a collection name and number and are described and listed in the collection access points given below. Recent work has seen the full cataloguing of our film and video collections, and this is available for reference and use in the reading room with prior notice required to enable us to book a video player. Early formats of film footage such as 16mm and 8mm are collected by the NFA but are not available for viewing. We do however have a commitment to reformat such film into digital standards such that it can be viewed on computers within the reading room. We are presently working with some rare footage from the Noel Drewe collection, as well as a large selection of family films featuring prominent London show families through the 1960s.