From trick riders to big tops: The story of the UK’s first circus in Lambeth

Just over 250 years ago, the first circus opened in the UK, and now an exhibition tells the history of the circus and how it all started in South London.

The first circuses weren’t travelling affairs but were fixed locations, and the one generally considered the first in the UK was at a site in Westminster Bridge Road where St Thomas’ Hospital now stands. Opened in 1770 by Philip Astley and his wife Patty Jones, it was a show of trick-riding displays, sword work displays, rope acts and tumbling, and later animal training.

The exhibition, at the Lambeth Archives in Brixton, tells the history of the first and follow-on circus families with a mix of information boards, early posters, and later photos.

Curated by Charlie Holland, the display is made up of some of the many circus families who lived in Lambeth and became globally famous in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras: acts like the acrobatic Craggs, the juggler Paul Cinquevalli, the Mongador Brothers and the aerial Hanlon-Volta troupe.

The exhibition mainly focuses on the circus’s early years, when it was based in a building. It was only in the 1850s that the circus started touring the UK during the summer, and the concept of the giant circus tent was born. Today, it’s almost impossible to imagine a circus happening anywhere other than inside a large tent.

It’s an interesting history of a time when the music halls nurtured young actors who could become circus performers and travel the country in a way they could probably have never imagined possible when growing up in a Lambeth slum.

Later featured are the later travelling circuses such as Sanger’s and Smart’s who would pitch on Clapham and Streatham Commons, to be followed in the 1980s by their “New Circus” successors performing physical theatre without animal acts: companies like Archaos, Circus Burlesque and Ra-Ra Zoo.

It’s a fascinating history of a period of time that seems to be fading in the collective memory.

As it happens, not mentioned in the exhibition, but I had noticed some years back that from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, Christmas Day’s afternoon television was dominated by a circus act – so for many people, Christmas = Circus.

The exhibition, Ringside! Lambeth Astley’s and the Birth of British Circus is at the Lambeth Archives until 12th April 2025 and is free to visit.