Cornwall's first fairground organ festival at Poldark Mine near Helston

The festival offers visitors the chance to experience the distinctive sounds of mechanical fairground, street and dance organs of all sizes, from large fairground creations to small hand organs.

The festival has been held in Lifton in previous years, but this year’s extrav-organ-za is coming to the Poldark Mine at Trenear near Helston.

The magical chimes of music boxes and the well known sounds of fairground organs promise to take older visitors back in time and intrigue younger festival visitors.

The organs are coming from all over the south west and some are travelling from Gloucestershire. They are all privately owned and fully working.

The oldest organ being exhibited was made in 1906 and it has spent most of its life in French fairgrounds.

The largest fairground organ is 15 feet long and 10 feet high, a sight - and sound - not to be missed.

In fact some of the organs are so sizeable and are so loud that throughout the festival only one of the larger ones can be played at a time.

There will be a display of original hand-turned organs in the bandstand. One of these is a 1920 model Rotterdam that in the past was pulled around the streets.

Some of the organs have 104 keys, so they are pretty challenging to get to grips with.

The majority of the owners showing their organs have either undertaken the restorations themselves or built their own and they will be on hand to discuss their work.

The result is a fine display of machinery with the distinctive sounds and elaborate modelling particular to its kind.