then generator was turned on. In Ireland, mobile cinemas operated from the 1920s to the mid-1960s. A portable wooden structure was erected, with seating for up to 250 people. The building had wooden sides and a canvas roof, approximately 40 ft. by 24 ft. The 35mm projector was housed in a caravan at one end of the building. These shows travelled winter and summer in all sorts of weather; at times gales forced them to remove the canvas roof of the cinema sometimes at night when the winds made it hard to do so. There were up to 20 families touring Ireland, mainly in isolated areas where the nearest permanent cinema was miles away. These mobile cinemas stayed up to three weeks in a village before moving to another area. The families lived in caravans had their own generators and a stock of films with them. During the war, transport became difficult as fuel for motor vehicles was in short supply. Some cinemas settled down for the duration of the war, whilst others reverted to horses to move their equipment from village to village and saved their fuel to run the generators. Even then they had to buy extra fuel on the black market at up to 30 shillings a gallon. The children of the showmen went to the local national schools for the duration of their stay; some went to 16 - 18 schools a year. Admission fees were around 1 shilling and 6 pence to 2 shillings for adults around the time when they ceased to tour in the 1960s. The arrival of TV ended these mobile cinemas however they will be remembered for bringing cinema to people in isolated areas some who had never seen talking movies. Most of the films shown were about eight years old and had been bought by the show people who some had up to five weeks stock in hand showing for two hours a night, even though the showman owned the films they did not have the permission to show them to the public without paying excise duty each time they were shown needless to say they did not so every now and then along would come an excise officer and seize a film or at least just the title of a film. Most of the families changed to amusement shows, some operated their own circus, others went the way of