For most visitors, Barry’s is the first thing they remember about Portrush. It’s also older, and stranger in its origins, than most people realise.
A circus family, not a fairground company
James Chipperfield — a member of the famous Chipperfield circus dynasty, whose family history as showmen may stretch back to the late 1600s — brought his family to Ireland just before the First World War, touring as part of Heckenberg’s Circus (renamed Chadwick’s Circus once German- sounding names became unpopular during the war). At some point James started using the forename “Ernest” and the surname “Barry” instead of Chipperfield — several competing family stories explain why, from a lorry bought secondhand already bearing the name, to a deliberate split from the wider Chipperfield family as he set out on his own. By 1923 the Barry family were operating their own circus, billed as a Hippodrome, touring Bangor, Newcastle and Belfast with acrobats, musicians, trapeze artists and wire-walkers — Ernest’s wife Louisa and their five daughters performed multiple roles between them.
Before Barry’s: the Switchback Railways
Portrush had its own early roller coasters decades before Barry’s arrived. A “Switchback Railway” — an early gravity-ride design patented by American inventor LaMarcus Adna Thompson — opened on Ramore Hill in 1889, carrying roughly 45,000 passengers in its first season before being sold on to Larne in 1892 after a lease dispute with the Earl of Antrim. A second, separate Switchback Railway opened near the West Strand in 1894, complete with firework displays, and ran for at least two more years — a genuine forerunner of the Big Dipper that Barry’s would build on the same stretch of coast decades later.
Setting up in Portrush
Ernest Barry first bid for a site in Portrush in 1925 and 1926 without success; on 20 January 1927 he finally won a three-year lease on the Pleasure Grounds from the railway company, directly below the station where holidaymakers arrived. Through the 1930s the business grew from a seasonal, tent-based operation (arriving each Eastertime, departing every September) into permanent structures — the buildings recognisable as Barry’s today began appearing in the late 1930s.
The rides, decade by decade
Water Dodgems arrived in 1933 — small electrically-powered boats in a 100ft tank of water, replaced by Speedway Cars in 1946. A Helter Skelter and a big wheel known as the “Big Eli Wheel” appeared from 1949. The Peter Pan Railway, an outdoor miniature train through landscaped gardens, opened in 1950 (its former site is now Kiddieland). In 1964 Barry’s bought a set of “Gallopers” — traditional carousel horses originally built in 1892 by Robert Tidman — restoring them from a dilapidated state; they’re still running today, over 130 years old. The first Big Dipper arrived in 1968, officially opened by comedian Dickie Henderson; the current one dates to 2004, alongside “The Freak Out,” a considerably more disorienting addition. A dancing ballroom operated behind the site from 1947 to 1952, drawing some of the era’s biggest touring dance bands.
Still standing
Barry’s has weathered a hundred years as more than a fairground — a wet-day refuge, a first job for generations of local teenagers (including future actor [James Nesbitt](/notable-people-of- portrush/), who worked there as a bingo caller and brakeman on the Big Dipper), and, by most locals’ account, the single most-remembered feature of a Portrush childhood. It remains, to this day, a family business operating on a seasonal basis — a rare thing for an amusement park this old, anywhere.