In the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, people were looking for new and novel ways to have fun using technologies created during the Industrial Revolution. The result was the creation of travelling fairs that toured across the nation, bringing people cheap thrills using modern tech.

The roundabout was one of many of a similar design. The roundabout was built around 1912 in  Tidman in Norwich, a city in the industrial heart of the UK. The roundabout features 24 horses, 6 chickens, and 2 carts, but similar models built by the same company also have pigs, sheep, and even ostriches.

The Hollycombe Steam Collection was founded in the late 1940s in order to preserve old steam-powered farming equipment that was being replaced across the UK. It was not until the early 1960s that the fairground opened, and only in the late 1960s that the railways opened. In 1984, the collection was sold to a charity funded partially by the government, who still operates the collection to this day.