Arrival of VIPs for Official Opening of Cork Exhibition (1902)

Horse-drawn carriages deliver dignitaries to the Cork Exhibition.

The Cork International Exhibition was one of many similar events held in Victorian and Edwardian times. Industrial and machinery halls had pride of place, but entertainments on offer included a water chute, a switchback railway, a 'temperance restaurant', a shooting gallery, a creamery and an aquarium. The original pavilion and fountain survive in what is now Fitzgerald's Park.

This film was commissioned by George Green, one of the most successful showmen to pioneer fairground cinema, who secured the exclusive fairground and filming rights to the Cork International Exhibition. In December 1901 Green placed an advertisement in The Showman inviting bids for the supply of the "very best Cinematograph outfit it is possible to procure", but warning that "makers of second rate machines and takers of inferior, unsteady, out of focus films will save their own time (and also mine) by ignoring this advert."