Carnival king accused of Winter Wonderland fire threat in battle with sons over £10m fairground empire

A family feud over a £10m funfair empire has reached court with a son accusing his 65-year-old showman dad of breaking his nose with a headbutt, poaching customers and threatening to destroy a carousel used for Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland event.

The accusation against Joseph Manning senior emerged at London’s High Court as his two sons, Clayton Manning and Joseph Manning Junior, claimed to be living in fear of their father - a veteran showman whose ancestor laid the foundations for the family empire after running a fairground peepshow in the 1850’s.

Bad blood developed between Joseph Snr and his two sons over control of the family business, including flagship attraction flagship Old MacDonald’s Farm and Fun Park in Brentwood, Essex.

The Manning group of companies - said by Joseph Snr to be worth about £10m - also operate temporary funfair events at major cities throughout England, and provide rides, attractions and catering services for the Winter Wonderland event in Hyde Park and the Winterland event at Dartford’s Bluewater shopping centre.

Joseph Junior, 43, and Clayton, 33, are suing their dad over claims he broke pledges that they would inherit the massively lucrative family concerns despite the years of hard work they poured into helping out at the farm and in the business.

And the dispute came before a judge last week as the family’s two companies - Mannings Organisation Ltd and Mannings Amusements Ltd - which the brothers now run, sought an injunction barring Joseph Snr from harassing company staff or interfering with daily operations.

open image in gallery

Richard Power, barrister for the two companies, said the order was necessary in light of past incidents in which Joseph Snr had allegedly behaved violently or disrupted the operations run by Mannings Organisation and Mannings Amusements, companies from which the older man was ousted as director in September 2024.

The barrister highlighted a number of alarming incidents he claimed justified injuncting Mr Manning Snr, including an alleged flare-up in July 2024 when he assaulted both his sons, breaking Clayton’s nose with a headbutt and splitting Joseph’s brow open.

On top of that the elderly showman stands accused of threatening to destroy a carousel used at Winter Wonderland and “breaking into the site occupied by Mannings Amusements at the Winterland event at Bluewater, trespassing and setting up catering stalls without any licence or agreement to do so”.

open image in gallery

Sketching out the siblings’ case on their father’s “rogue” antics, the barrister explained: “Joseph Manning Snr has been engaged in a persistent and deliberate course of unreasonable and oppressive conduct, targeted at the claimant companies and Joseph Jr and Clayton Manning, which is calculated to and has caused alarm, fear or distress and has already had - and will continue to have, if not restrained - an ongoing serious impact on the claimants’ business.”

In October 2023, Joseph Snr had “threatened to set fire to some key equipment that was due to be transported to the Winter Wonderland Event,” and then a year later threatened to “destroy the carousel used for Winter Wonderland,” he alleged.

There was also evidence that he had attempted to prevent the family business getting the Winter Wonderland contract, the barrister added, with Royal Parks receiving an “anonymous letter urging them not to award the Winter Wonderland contract” to Mannings Amusements last November.

The alleged harassment peaked on October 16 last year when Joseph Snr “unlawfully forced entry into the Dartford Winterland event, removing several locks and fence panels, and set up food stalls on the site,” the barrister claimed.

“He was asked to leave by the head of security for the Winterland event, but refused to do so. The manager of the Bluewater site attended and told Mr Clayton Manning that issues of this kind, if unresolved, could lead to the Winterland Event being cancelled and jeopardise Manning Amusement’s contract in future years.”

The stalls were finally removed the following day.

open image in gallery

But Joseph Snr flatly denies all claims of violence and harassment, insisting that in fact his sons were the “aggressors” in the July confrontation and that he only attended the October 2025 Winter Wonderland event because he was advised to do so by the Showmen’s Guild “in order to protect his rights under the guild rules”.

Addressing the alleged headbutt attack, his barrister, Tom Grant KC, told Deputy Judge Andrew Kinnier KC: “In truth his sons - strong and young - were the aggressors in the incident.

“Clayton, during this incident, strangled his father - then suffering from cancer,” said the KC, also suggesting that the brothers’ anti-harassment injunction application is “motivated by a desire to put my client in prison”.

In his written evidence, Joseph Jnr testified that he feels “fearful” of his elderly dad - but Mr Grant said there were no grounds for such a fear.

The conflict between Joseph Snr and his sons has played out against the background of their claims that their parents intend to cut them out of their inheritance, which prompted the pair to sue for alleged breach of their rights to inherit Old Macdonald’s Farm and other prize Manning family assets.

open image in gallery

In court documents, the Manning brothers say their dad and their mother Sindy, who own Old MacDonald’s Farm, “failed to act in good faith”, and they are now suing for “proprietary estoppel” over these alleged broken promises.

The two siblings say they grew up believing they would end up running the entire family business and that their two sisters, Shannon, 33, and Chanel, 40, “would become their husbands’ responsibilities when they married” or pursue different types of work - with Chanel apprenticed to the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and Shannon pursuing business studies.

But they say that in recent years their parents have turned against them and started planning to disinherit them, insisting that “it would be unconscionable for their parents to renege on their promises” and change their wills.

Both brothers say they worked weekends and during school holidays as youngsters to help their parents, before leaving school to work full-time and clocking up 16-hour days at the height of the season.

And they claim they used their own cash to buy some of the rides used at Old MacDonald’s Farm and by the family’s travelling fair - which played a part in the Millennium celebrations in the Mall in London and which now tours around the UK and various overseas locations.

Joseph Jnr says he wasn’t paid a wage at all until June 2022 when he was handed £2,000 per month, while Clayton says he was paid £500 per month from 2013 - with both payments abruptly ceasing in August 2024.

Joseph Jnr also says he was in partnership with his parents since 2003 when he took out a mortgage to help buy Old MacDonald’s Farm with them, and both he and Clayton now seek a court ruling that they are entitled to inherit shares in the farm business and other family assets.

But in court Joseph Snr’s barrister said his client had built up both arms of the family funfair business - Mannings Organisation and Mannings Amusement - and said he had been more than generous to his two sons.

Explaining the case’s turbulent background, he told the judge: “Until 2020 Joseph Snr was the majority shareholder in both companies. In 2020, he made gratuitous share transfers to his two sons, such that the shareholding in the companies has since then and is now held 33 percent by Joseph Jnr, 33 percent by Clayton and 34 percent by Joseph Snr.

“Until 2024, Joseph Snr was the sole de jure director of both companies. By ordinary resolutions passed on July 10 2024, Joseph Jnr and Clayton appointed themselves as directors of the companies.

“By further ordinary resolutions passed on 6 September 2024, they removed Joseph Snr as director. Since then, Joseph Jnr and Clayton have been the only directors of the two companies.”

The brothers’ bid to slap a court injunction on their father - with a threat of jail hanging over it if breached - had to be seen “in the context of a broader family dispute between Joseph Jnr and Clayton on the one side and Joseph Snr together with his wife, Sindy, on the other”.

“Both parents are supported in the row by their daughters, Chanel and Shannon,’ said Mr Grant, adding: “These two sons have brought proceedings against their father and mother where the gravamen of those proceedings is to seek orders which will strip away from their parents if successful - although they’re powerfully contested - vast swathes of the assets which they have built up over many decades through extremely hard work.

“These companies were founded by my client and he strove over many decades to make them successful,” said the barrister, also citing evidence from the brothers’ sister, Chanel, who claimed that Joseph Jnr had “provoked my father deliberately”.

“The only thing my father is guilty of is giving my brothers too much throughout their lives,” she testified in her written evidence.

In court documents, Joseph Snr insists that both his sons have been amply provided for, with their shares in the two Manning companies collectively worth up to £7m, also denying that either brother had worked for next-to-nothing for him.

In fact, he lavished generosity on the pair, he claims, highlighting Joseph Jnr’s £1m collection of high performance cars - including an Aston Martin, E-type Jaguar and a Hummer - which his dad says he paid for.

His barrister dismissed the brothers’ court injunction bid as a disguised attempt simply to put Joseph Snr behind bars, telling the judge: “This application has been confected in order to try and engineer the circumstances where they can accomplish their desire to see their father put in prison.”

Deputy Judge Kinnier has now reserved his decision on the question of whether he should extend a temporary injunction granted back in December last year restraining Joseph Snr from intimidating company staff or setting up a stall or entering Winterland or Winter Wonderland events unless coming in as a ticket-paying visitor.