Biography

The Holland family were perhaps one of the most famous of the fairground bioscope proprietors with both Annie Holland, nee Payne, and her brother George Payne, travelling two of the largest and most lavish shows on the fairground.

Annie Holland was the daughter of Mrs Payne, and her family's entry into the fairground business arose out of necessity. Her mother had been left a widow when her father died at the age of forty. Mrs Payne's solution to the problem of no income was to exhibit one of her children, who according to family tradition weighed in excess of forty stone.

The Holland cinematograph show could reputedly hold up to a thousand people with both exterior and interior elaborately decorated.

After becaming estranged from her husband, Annie Holland left London in 1901 and returned to the fairground. Her first show, the Palace of Light, began as a two-wagon fronted booth, built by the firm of Orton and Spooners, and included a gilded, carved proscenium which framed the screen comprising statues of angels, carved pillars and lavishly decorated masks. From 1904 onwards the show underwent dramatic renovations and after the tragedy in 1912 when the original booth was damaged in a fire on Anglesey, it became an amalgamation of other shows. Mrs Holland now bought Edwin Lawrence's show to replace it, however, it appears that only the two wagons at the front of the original exhibition that sustained the damage.

The Holland family presented both the Palace of Light and Wonderland, which was travelled by Annie's son Albert. Arthur Fay writing as Southdown in the World's Fair in the 1930s provides an interesting account of the type of performance the exhibitors presented. In April 1912 when the news of the sinking of the Titanic broke, a Gaumont Film Company newsreel was shown of the event. To accompany the film of the disaster, the Holland family arranged a musical sketch which incorporated tunes such as Afloat on the Ocean Blue, Ship's Bell Rings, The Sailor's Two Step, Crash, An Iceberg, Excitement on Board, Lowering the Boats, Women and Children First, and finished with Nearer my God to Thee and Chopin's Funeral March. The February issue of World's Fair in 1936 includes a description of a bill used by the Holland family and provides us with a guide to the admission charges which range from 3d up to 6d. Both shows continued to travel until the outbreak of the First World War, when the Palace of Light was settled permanently at Measham by James Holland where it continued to present moving pictures whilst the permanent cinema was constructed around it.

In the twenty first century the Holland family continue providing entertainment under the name Hollands Amusements, a family run business travelling rides, stalls and other attractions around Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire, Cheshire and North Wales among others.

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