Carnival king in bitter court battle with sons over £10,000,000 funfair empire

A travelling funfair family has been torn apart by a bitter £10 million inheritance battle.

Clayton, 33, and Joseph Manning Jr, 43, are involved in a legal showdown with 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, 65, and his two sons over control of the family business, including flagship attraction flagship Old MacDonald’s Farm and Fun Park in Brentwood, Essex, which offers up a range of fun rides, a roller coaster, festive events and a variety of exotic and farmyard animals.

The Manning group of companies – said by Joseph Snr to be worth about £10 million – also operate temporary funfair events at major cities throughout England.

They 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 and Clayton are suing their dad over claims he broke pledges that they would inherit the lucrative family business.

The fall-out reached the courtroom last week when 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 staff or interfering with daily operations.

Richard Power, for the two companies, said the order was necessary in light of past incidents.

The court was told Joseph Snr had behaved violently or disrupted the operations run by the companies, from which he was ousted as director in September 2024.

The barrister highlighted several 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’.

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’, the court heard.

Then a year later he threatened to ‘destroy the carousel used for Winter Wonderland’, it was said.

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’.

Joseph Snr flatly denies all claims of violence and harassment, insisting that in fact his sons were the ‘aggressors’ in the July confrontation.

He claims 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,’ he said, also suggesting that the brothers’ anti-harassment injunction application is ‘motivated by a desire to put my client in prison’.

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.

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 £7 million, 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 £1 million 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.

That order prohibits 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.

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