Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach

Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach is an amusement park on the Norfolk coast, beside the North Sea. It opened in 1909 on land leased from the council, turning sand dunes south of Nelson’s Gardens into a fairground. Early attractions included the Scenic Railway, a Thompson scenic railway designed by William Napier, and the Katzenjammer Castle funhouse. After the First World War the park was run by John Henry Iles, who rebuilt the Scenic Railway after a fire and added rides such as Jack and Jill and Noah’s Ark. In 1929 the Collins family installed a Figure 8 roller coaster and a circular water chute designed by Hugo Haase. The park’s best-known ride is the wooden Roller Coaster, opened in 1932 after being bought from the Colonial Exhibition in Paris. This scenic railway has no brakes on the track and still needs a brakesperson to control speed. It is one of only seven such rides worldwide and the only one of its kind in East Anglia. In the 1950s the Botton brothers took over and added new attractions like The Jets and Swirl. Later, Jimmy Jones and his son Albert Jones ran the park, installing the Pleasure Beach Gardens in 1996 with Sara’s Tearooms and miniature golf. Today the park has more than twenty-five large rides plus children’s entertainment and catering. Recent additions like Coaster Cabana and Fairground Frights have won awards. The Jones family, now in their third generation, manage the park with Albert’s sons Jamie and Aaron. A Premier Inn hotel and Beefeater restaurant opened nearby in 2019, giving visitors a place to stay and eat after a day on the rides.