The travelling fair
Touring showmen brought a travelling fair to West Mersea. One remembered operator was Buggs & Crighton, named in a family recollection recorded by local historian Ron Green in 2019.
Buggs & Crighton
Green’s father, born in November 1902, recalled the fair and the water squirts sold there. Green thought his father may have visited before the First World War, but this is an estimate, not a documented visit date. The recollection gives no confirmed fairground site or annual timetable.
Mersea's separately organised regatta dates back to 1838. It was a distinct annual event, not the travelling fair.
Green remembered the squirts as something children used to spray water at girls. He thought they might have been rubber bulbs, but did not know how they were made.