IT’S one scene that never changes at St Giles Fair in Oxford.

The Galloping Horses – or the Carousel – have been a favourite with fairgoers near Martyrs’ Memorial for generations.

This picture of James Noyce’s attraction proclaiming “Proud Old Time Riding Horses Rode By All With Joy”, dates from 1970 when business was as brisk as ever.

The Oxford Mail reported: “Children were waiting anxiously to get on the horses, one of the few remaining rides in the country with its own faithfully preserved fairground organ which still plays the tunes it played in 1900.

“Further up St Giles, the Tunnel of Love stands uneasily next to the Jets, whose patrons are advised in large red letters to ‘control your own machine while in orbit and pay in the plane’.

“Not surprisingly, the Ghost Train stops at Ghostleigh, Dracula’s fanged daughter is lying in a coffin surrounded by rats and the owner of the chimpanzees (as seen on TV) is offering ‘£1,000 if not alive’.

“In fact, despite the new rides and the hot dogs, the fair is much as it must have been for the last 150 years.

“As one old stallholder, who has been spending his summers on the road for 60 years, put it: ‘People still seem to enjoy themselves in the same old way’.”

One stallholder that year was Sarah Shaw, 85, a regular for nearly 75 years.

Mrs Shaw, whose family ran a roll-up stall and two children’s roundabouts, told the Mail: “I used to come with my parents and I suppose I shall come every year while I am alive.”

Among the crowd was Fred Taphouse, 76, a fairgoer for 71 years. “He said: “When I first came, the main attractions were the wild beasts – a pelican and a lion.”