The park
Fifty years of Bramblewick
A farm that grew a fairground, a family that never left, and a valley that still smells of cut grass and candyfloss on an August afternoon.
It started with one carousel and a wet August
In 1974 Joan and Peter Hartwell put a second-hand set of gallopers in the bottom field because the hay had failed and something had to pay for the winter. Four hundred people came in the first week, most of them for the tea rather than the ride. The farm is still here and the top forty acres are still grazed, but the bottom twenty grew twenty-four rides, an orchard, a railway and a lake. Three generations have run it now, and the same family still measures the children at the gate.
A short history in seven rows
The dates the park is measured by, including the ones that went badly.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1974 | Second-hand gallopers in the bottom field. Four hundred visitors in week one. |
| 1979 | The Dodgems arrive. Same twelve cars still running, re-panelled every winter. |
| 1988 | The Netherdale Railway opens — half a mile, one tunnel, one signal. |
| 1996 | The Beckwater Flume. Wet socks become a Bramblewick tradition. |
| 2004 | Fire in the Orchard Barn. Closed for a season; rebuilt with the roof it should always have had. |
| 2018 | The Bramblewick Bolt — 720 metres, and the biggest thing the family has ever borrowed for. |
| 2024 | Fiftieth season. The 1926 carousel restored a second time. |
How the park lies
The Green in the middle, the Hollow cut into the bank, the Beck along the bottom, the Orchard up the slope and the Meadow beyond the railway. Nothing is more than eight minutes from anything else.
The people who run it
Rosa HartwellThird generation · runs the gatehouse
Grew up behind the ice cream counter and now does the rotas, the school packs and most of the arguing with the council.
Danny OkonjoHead of engineering
Twenty-two years on rides, eleven of them here. Starts the walk-round at 07:45 and signs the sheets himself.
Founder
Peter HartwellFounder · still on the carousel
Bought the gallopers in 1974 and has never quite handed them over. Runs the Wurlitzer on Sundays.
People think the rides are the business. The rides are the excuse. The business is a family getting home tired, having spent less than they expected.
Peter Hartwell, founderCome and see it
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