THE SHOWMAN OF BARRY ISLAND
Showman Henry can’t wait to welcome crowds back to Barry Island funfair
IT IS mid-July and Barry Island Pleasure Park should be teeming with thousands of visitors. Normally the clattering of rollercoasters and screams would be drowning out the sound of the waves and the cry of gulls.
But these are not normal times and the amusement park made famous the world over by TV smash-hit Gavin and Stacey is eerily quiet.
The rides have been still for more than four months.
The dodgems are covered in tarpaulin, the amusement arcade is piled high with slot machines and weeds are starting to poke up through broken tarmac.
It is a forlorn sight.
Yet charging up through the middle of the park comes Henry Danter, his eyes crinkled with a giant smile, and he cries: “Isn’t this the greatest place to be?”
As he bounces around the empty park on a drab July day, energetically waving his hands pointing out the new rides for 2020, his enthusiasm is infectious.
Despite the wind blowing off Whitmore Bay and the seagulls squalling high above, it is hard not to be drawn into his rhapsodic praise of Barry and the iconic park.
Even when he was a 10-year-old boy, selling boat rides to tourists for half a crown, Henry Danter had the gift of the gab.
It has seen him build up an entertainment empire that includes the Barry Island park as well as two others – Stourport-on-Severn in Worcestershire and Symonds Yat Treasure Island in Herefordshire.
Born in Birmingham in March 1944 into a family of travelling showmen, entertaining is all Henry has ever known.
Beginning in the 1800s, the W Danter & Sons company travelled the country delighting generations with penny rides on steam roundabouts, galloping horses and swinging boats.
Henry’s father was a gifted showman and so too was his grandfather. Now 76, Henry said: “The whole of my life has just been fun. I grew up in a fairground. My father was a showman and he left home when he was young and did very well. I’ve followed in his footsteps you could say.
“I didn’t do it for the money. I was lucky enough to be born into what I liked doing. My heart was always in the shows. My love, my passion and my life was there.”
Right now, his life is squarely at
Barry.
While his other two parks have reopened thanks to the easing of English lockdown restrictions, Barry Island is still closed.
But with the prospect of opening later this month, it’s all hands on deck for Henry and his team of staff.
“I haven’t been given the green light to open yet,” he says impatiently. “I’ve been told either the 13th or the 20th. But it definitely won’t be later than the 20th.
“I’ve got everything in place, we’re working on it now. There’s signs everywhere and signs on the ground and hand sanitiser in place.”
He certainly has a big job on his hands if the park is to be ready for tomorrow.
But Henry, who has 11 grandchildren, doesn’t shy away from work.
It’s all he’s ever known.
“It’s pretty stressful, I’ve got all this money going out, but none coming in,” he says.
“Just when we were ready to take off for the season, the coronavirus came in and we were very quickly shut down.
“It’s been four months, but it’s felt like four years.”
They are using up reserves saved for a “rainy day”, but the pandemic is “not like bad weather”, he says.
“Everybody has to be very careful. It’s been a very difficult job to do anything and this shutdown meant shutdown.”
Being situated so close to the sea, the salty air is particularly corrosive and maintenance has been essential.
Hardly any staff have been furloughed. At the moment, in what should be the peak of the summer season, the park is costing him around £5,000 every week just to maintain.
Henry’s grandson, also called Henry, appears round a corner and gets his orders for the next job.
Henry Jnr, 27, runs the Barry park along with Henry’s son, Harry.
Meanwhile, Henry Snr is off to Porthcawl that same afternoon and then has a 4am start the next day for a quick trip to Blackpool. It seems like a brutal regime for someone in their 70s, but Henry won’t hear of such talk.
“We love it,” he says with a real twinkle in his eyes, heading towards his office tucked away behind one of the rollercoasters.
The office is a smart static caravan which doubles as a living space. Inside it is all grey and modern. This is home for Henry and his partner, Danka, when the park is at its busiest. During the summer, he tries to spend at least three or four days here, commuting back to his country home in Herefordshire when he can.
Henry’s home in Symonds Yat is the former Doward Hotel, a 20-bedroom mansion, known affectionately by his family as “The Castle”.
It is perched high above the Wye Valley with views across the empire Henry has built up over the years.
The self-confessed showman is also a businessman and can’t remember off the top of his head, but says he must have around 20 businesses on the go today.
Back on the river at Symonds Yat, there is a fleet of wooden boats that Henry used to work on as a 10-yearold.
For just half a crown, the boyhood Henry would regale punters with tales
of the surrounding history and help them on and off the boats. By his twenties, he had bought them all and owned the business.
From those boats he moved to properties in Ross-on-Wye via three hot dog vans doing the rounds at local nightclubs.
By 1965 he was the landlord of the Barrel Inn and the youngest licensee in Herefordshire. He was barely 21.
Henry kept expanding until he’d grown out of The Barrel and added the Top Spot Ballroom in Ross-on-Wye to his portfolio in 1982.
The entire Danter family, of which there are too many members to list, are all involved in the running of the three leisure parks today. Henry’s daughter Kimberley, 30, is in charge of the Symonds Yat one.
Before Henry, Barry Island Pleasure Park was owned by the businessman Ken Rogers, who died in 2000.
The park steadily declined, despite the best efforts of veteran showman Vernon Studt, who ran it under lease for the 2010-2012 seasons.
In 2015, Henry showed up, determined to return the park to those glory days.
Henry has fond memories of childhood trips to the seaside town and the island holds a special place in his heart.
Even so, Barry is also the one which has nearly finished him off at times, and he has ploughed £8m into the park in the past five years. He has plans to spend £12m more.
Any question about money gets waved away with a flippant “you’ll have to ask my accountant”. All he knows is his official salary is “something like” £3,000 per week or £150,000 each year. Not that he ever sees it, or has time to spend it, he adds.
Looking at the site on a bleak July day, it is difficult to appreciate just how popular it once was, especially in the ’60s and ’70s.
But Henry is oblivious to this and truly believes the amusement park not only still has a place in Barry, but is destined for much bigger things.
The funfair has been an attraction in Barry since 1920, and had 400,000 visitors over a bank holiday at its peak in 1934. He doesn’t know exact visitor numbers today, but says they must be in the millions.
“We’re not done with Barry,” he chuckles. “Not until we’ve put Barry back how it was when I came here as a kid. It was a special delight to come as a kid, and that’s when I fell in love with Barry.”
His love for Barry has not been without some hiccups, though.
In 2017, Henry was “gutted” after the council decided to pursue a legal case against him over a structurally unsound dodgems building at the park. Earlier that summer, the fairground was accused of building an extension at the park without the correct planning permission, and it was taken down.
And in November 2017 the 100ft big wheel he brought to the park was embroiled in another planning permission argument and it, too, was taken down.
In January 2018, he was ordered to pay £35,000 in fines and court costs after his Treasure Island arcade building breached planning regulations.
Henry continues: “When we bought Barry, we took it on and it had gone down the pan. My daughter Kimberley said, ‘Dad, is this too big, have you bitten off more than you can chew?’
“I know I can do it, but I have had my doubts. But I’m not a quitter.”
Right now, people in his industry are going bust “left, right and centre”, he says. Machinery he was trying to buy in January for four figures has been offered to him for just £300.
“That’s how desperate the trade is,” he says. “I just hope I’m going to survive.”
He doesn’t dwell on the struggles though, and suddenly bursts out: “It’s Barry, this is the place to be,” while animatedly waving his arms above his head again. You know we have the biggest wheel in the country?” he asks suddenly. “This is the greatest place. We want to be the number one place in Wales.”
The arrival of Gavin and Stacey certainly didn’t do Henry’s business and his dreams any harm.
“But Barry was great before they were even born,” he exclaims.
Yet that surge in interest in Barry since Gavin and Stacey has heralded much-needed change, with a slew of new enterprises and regeneration projects making the seaside town more enticing than ever.