CARNIVAL time in Oxfordshire towns and villages meant hard work for some but enjoyment for many others.

These pictures bring back the magic that many such events have brought to communities in the county over the years.

Picture 1 shows members of the Women’s Institute at Fritwell, near Bicester, showing a leg aboard their carnival float in 1986.

Fritwell Anglers Club was judged the winner with its float decorated as a Viking long boat.

The carnival included children’s sports, including an egg and spoon race, entertainment, stalls and a yard of ale competition.

Children from Chalgrove Playgroup, seen dressed in Dutch costumes in Picture 2, won the prize for the best float in the village’s 1988 carnival procession.

Other floats also represented different peoples of the world, while others reminded spectators of the village’s part in the English Civil War.

Paul Seeney, 10, of Thames Street, Eynsham, in Picture 3, posed as a paperboy with a difference at the village carnival in 1975, wrapped in dozens of copies of the Oxford Mail.

A washing line competition was one of the highlights of Berinsfield Carnival in 1970.

Competitors, including Mrs S Colmer, left, and Mrs P Long in Picture 4, had to put up a line of washing in the fastest time, blindfolded.

Twelve teams of two women took part, with the best performance 11 articles in 2min 22sec.

Watlington Festival had a Wild West theme in 1983, with cowboys, Indians and sheriffs everywhere.

Four -year-old Bret Baker, seen in Picture 5 with Geoff Whittaker, won the prize for the best costume.

Watlington Youth Band provided entertainment at one end of High Street and a pop and jazz band at the other end, both in Wild West outfits.

The Oxford International Folk Dance group, in Picture 6, joined the annual carnival on Osney Island, Oxford, in 1986.

The event raised £1,000 for Sobell House hospice in Oxford and famine victims in Ethiopia.