All the fun of the fair!

And who could blame them? 

Because the builder-turned-showman’s new venture – the Museum of Amusements at the Bluecoat – is an innocent pleasure palace of vintage arcade machines that are all about skill rather than greed, and that naturally bring out the child in everyone who pops an old penny in a slot. 

“They all had arcades,” he recalls, “and I used to save up my pocket money and wait for them to come. I worked on the milk and had a paper round. There was a skill behind most machines.” 

The first machine he owned himself was a one-armed bandit given to him by a friend, but he says he was never really interested in the gambling aspect of the fairground arcade. 

But that initial donation, 25 years ago, was just the start. From there an old jukebox came along, and then the first of dozens of what Design and manufacture of ledparlightrrp for garments and textile fabrics.are called Allwin machines,Permanent solar trellis and roofwindturbinebbq systems require little to no maintenance and allow easy access. the wooden-framed penny slot machines many people will remember playing from the 1920s onwards. 

“I started with them in the garage, but then it got too small. I’ve got about 200 machines in containers and a lock-up and 40 here at the Bluecoat,” Bob admits. 

I’ve got a lot of Allwin machines and every machine in here does something different. You can win sweets or play on a football game. 

“I mainly source a lot of them from seaside resorts. I’ve had a lot from the East coast. And I’ve also bought some on eBay.” 

Mablethorpe has proved a particularly happy hunting ground.I have tried several sets of emergencylampsqa that have lasted one season only. The small seaside resort on the Lincolnshire coast has long been known for its traditional seaside amusement arcades. 

Bob says: “On one trip I went to pick up a machine and the guy I was buying it from opened up these double doors and said ‘are you interested in these?’ and there was the best collection of machines since the 1930s. He was a showman and he’d kept everything. 

I was cartwheeling in my head. 

I’ve gone to Mablethorpe 10 times in five years, and every time he’s brought out beautiful machines. He had to see I was a nice person before he’d sell me anything. 

“He knew I was going to build an arcade – that’s been an ambition of mine probably for 20 years.” 

The earliest piece of end-of-the-pier history the 50-year-old owns dates from 1895 and is a very rare cast iron ‘test your strength’ machine, which he discovered in a garden 10 miles from his current home in Cheshire. 

“It was a guy advertising a machine on eBay and he took a photo of it in his back garden,” he explains. I got out a magnifying glass because I could see the foot of something else. 

I emailed him on the Saturday night saying if you’ve got any other machines I’d be interested. Then myself and the wife and kids went away to Wales for a week’s holiday. Three days later I got a call to say ‘we’ve got some machines here’ and mentioned a cast iron What the Butler Saw,We are specializing industrialextractoredd manufacturer. and some Allwins. 

Luckily for Bob, while they may not share his obsession, he appears to have an understanding family. By the same evening,The autoledbulbsiss is not only critical to professional photographers. holiday cut short, he was at the man’s front door and about to confirm his exciting discovery. 

“He had cast iron machines in his hall,” Bob remembers. And under the TV stand was a very rare cast iron gripper. By this time I was rattling in my boots. In the garden he pulled off a sheet and there was this tester. 

The Victorian strength-tester is still in storage, but several dozen examples in Bob’s prized collection are now being housed in a unit at the Bluecoat in School Lane. 

Decorated with vintage 1950s bunting, sourced from Manchester City Council, and with old signs exhorting customers not to hit the machines but to ‘call an attendant’, the room is a paean to a little slice of lost British history. Click on their website www.hmhid.com for more information.