Text of news items and interview, BBC Radio Leeds, 03 November 2003

Drive Time 16.00 News headlines
Britain’s oldest surviving amusement park ride, the Aerial Glide at Shipley Glen Pleasure Grounds has become a grade two listed building after an emergency application by a local campaigner and an amusement park historian.

Drive Time 17.00 News headlines
Britain’s oldest surviving amusement park ride, the Aerial Glide at Shipley Glen Pleasure Grounds has become a grade two listed building after an emergency application by a local campaigner and an amusement park historian.  Paul Bond reports:

Paul Bond:  “Riders on the Aerial Glide sit in individual chairs suspended from an elevated rectangular shaped track and descend under the force of gravity to the bottom.  It’s one of two surviving Victorian attractions that once brought Bradford mill-workers by the thousand to spend their leisure time at Shipley Glen.  The other is the nearby Shipley Glen Tramway the oldest surviving cable railway in the country.  Local campaigners have been fighting to save the pleasure grounds for over a year.  The strength of local opposition meant that a planning application had been deferred but even late last week the campaigners feared that the ride, which was built in 1900, might be about to be demolished.” 

Drive Time (later)
Presenter Daragh Corcoran: (previewing upcoming items) “… and when is a fairground ride not a fairground ride?  … when it’s a listed building of course.  We are at Shipley Glen in the next hour to find out all about that.

Drive time (later)
Corcoran:   “….just happens to be in Shipley, has been saved by its supporters.  We are going to send our reporter to have a spin on it to see if it’s worth all the trouble, and in other news…

Drive Time 17.41 approx
Corcoran: “Now Britain’s oldest amusement park attraction, the Aerial Glide at Shipley Glen Pleasure Grounds has been saved from extinction.  The ride dates back to 1900 and this is only the second time a funfair ride has ever been listed. It was rushed through at the end of last week with the help of an amusement park historian.  Our Bradford District reporter John Millward went to Shipley to speak to Mike Short, a local resident, who campaigned to save it and asked Mike exactly what the ride means to the area."

Mike Short from outside Shipley Glen Pleasure Grounds: “The Aerial Glide is just one of two surviving Victorian attractions that were once here all over the Glen.  Now, next to us here is the Shipley Glen Tramway, a very famous and historic survivor, and here is the other one, the Aerial Glide.  It is looking a bit sad because it hasn’t been painted for a couple of years – but it has been here since 1900 and that makes it the oldest surviving amusement park ride in the country and the oldest known ride of this type anywhere. 

Reporter John Millward:  “You get on at the top in an individual chair and the force of gravity then pulls you down.  Is that about the size of it?”

Short: “It doesn’t look very scary by today’s standards but you can imagine a child in 1900 getting on this contraption and going down, under the force of gravity, round a couple of curves, down a steep slope, to be caught at the bottom.  It must have been (laughing) very, very scary and very thrilling in those days.  But, as I say, it’s an important survivor, and it was very important to us that it was maintained as part of the social and cultural history of this entire area.

Millward:  “So it’s just become listed hasn’t it?  Now there has only been one other funpark ride that has been listed before, isn’t that right?

Short:  That was the wooden Scenic railway roller coaster down in Dreamland in Margate.  That was listed after a campaign last year.  And when we though this was under threat, we sought the help of the fairground historian, Nick Laister, who had campaigned down in Margate and he helped us put together an emergency application for listed status.  It was our only hope of saving the place.  The landowner wanted to build houses here and demolish the whole of the funfair including this historic ride.”

Millward:  “Was it all about saving the ride or was there an element of opposing the house building too?”

Short:  “Of, for me it’s not opposing the house building, but saving the funfair.  This funfair has delighted generations of Bradfordians, starting with the Victorian mill-workers who used to stream up here in there thousands.  But the site today is still popular among people right across Bradford, especially those who can’t afford to venture very far from home.”

Millward:  “What’s it giving to Shipley?”

Short:  “Without the Aerial Glide, the fun-fair itself would be unlikely to survive and if the fun-fair were to go then that would also put at threat the future of the Shipley Glen Tramway.

Millward:  “So the ride is hopefully going to be here for another hundred years for generations to enjoy.  And with that it’s back to you in the studio.”

Corcoran (in studio):  “Thanks John Millward there.  I think it’s a good idea to keep that because from a tourism perspective Saltaire can only get more popular with its World Heritage Site status and people will like to see the village centre and they’ll want to wander a little further afield and that will be one of the things they could look at.  I think that foreign visitors love all the Victoriana so that would be something well worth keeping in my opinion.” 

Drive Time 18.00 News headlines
Britain’s oldest surviving amusement park ride, the Aerial Glide at Shipley Glen Pleasure Grounds has become a grade two listed building after an emergency application by a local campaigner and an amusement park historian.

 

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