If you’ve ever been to Hull Fair, it’s likely you’ve come across a member of the Cole family. Six generations of travelling showmen have passed their knowledge of life “on the street” travelling Yorkshire’s fairgrounds with food and drink vans, operating rides and performing in acts.
This year will be the first year since losing a much-loved uncle Tony, whose vans have been present at Yorkshire-based fairs for more than 60 years. But the event will be bittersweet, as two-month-old Ariana will attend Hull Fair for the very first time.
Jade Plattern, formerly Jade Cole, explained how generation after generation has followed in their family’s footsteps. Jade’s parents, William and Paula Cole, and her three siblings, Christina, William and Michael are all part of the travelling showman way of life and will team up at Hull fair when it rolls into town next week. The tradition is continuing into the next generation too. William has two children, William and Ruby, while Michael has Leelan, Michael-Anthony and now baby Ariana.
Uncle Tony – a well-known face at the fair for many years alongside his wife June – passed away on Christmas Day 2025, passing on the mantle of his food and drink vans to the next generation of his family.
Jade said: “When my grandad passed Tony took everything over. My dad stepped in and we worked alongside Tony for quite a few years. About two years ago they stopped doing it because June couldn’t manage. Over 60 years they’ve been going to the Driffield Show and Winterton Show. They were huge parts of a lot of them, people knew them so well.”
And it is not just food and drink that the Cole family have been involved in when it comes to the travelling shows. William’s great grandad Tommy Cole was a travelling showman and he held stalls at Hull Fair before the Second World War. And William’s great grandmother Susanne Watson was a tight rope walker in a travelling circus.
Jade’s grandfather Tommy Cole, William’s father, had a traditional hand-turned children’s ride which has been passed down through generations and still tours today with Jade’s brother, also called William. Historic family photos also show an unknown member of the Cole family as a child holding two pet monkeys on Walton Street.
Jade sees the fairs as a way of life. This year, her family will have five stalls in a row at the beginning of Walton Street from Anlaby Road. These include everything people expect to find at the fair: burgers, hot dogs, long cable sweets, candyfloss and donuts, to name a few. Jade’s dad William has the biggest stall of them all. Known as a panum, the stall is one of the biggest sellers of Wright’s traditional Brandy Snap. This year, Jade and Fran will bring something never seen before at Hull Fair. They are introducing Fry My Chocolate, chocolate bars fried in a crispy batter.
Jade said: “We dip a chocolate bar in a pancake mix then put it in the fryer on a skewer. There are sauces, sprinkles, whatever anybody fancies on it. It’s gooey chocolate, quite naughty. We did a festival with them and it went down really well. We’ve done Snickers, Bueno, Mars Bar, Milky Way, anything really – we are happy to try it.”
Jade and Fran’s children, Dylan and Adalyn, love helping out at the stall on Walton Street. Jade said: “They both really enjoy coming, they are so good. They don’t know any different just like we didn’t. They enjoy helping to serve it helps them with maths as well. Both are really sociable, everyone always says how talkative they are.”
Fran says he is from a “normal Hull family” but has had his eyes opened to the “fascinating” travelling world since they met in 2013. He said: “There is a real mixture of old and new this year, which I think sums up the fairground way of life quite nicely. The traditions are still incredibly important, but each generation also gets the opportunity to bring something of its own to the fair.”
Jade said: “I brought him in, he’s not had that background at all. We met through my mum and dad’s friends and he is not from the travelling background. Out of the fairground, we live a normal life. We have a house in Brough where we live but all year most weekends we are out at the sweet stalls. My mum and dad live on the yard, you’d imagine that to be like a more traditional showman’s area. Yearly, we all have our own area. My brother has children’s rides, traditional chair swings, cups and saucers, while my mum and dad do the hot food. My other brother does slush and snow cones, and I do sweets all year around. We each stick to our own things.”
Find the Coles on Anlaby Road when the fair comes into town from Friday 9 October.
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