Life Under the Big Top: Kent's Santus Circus
Columnist Sam Wood gives a 2026 reminder that we can all still run away to the circus
Images by Sam Woods and Santus Circus
If you grew up in Kent, you’ll know Santus Circus from the ubiquitous posters that have been a feature of the county for decades.
I can’t recall a Kent without them. On lampposts and billboards, you’d see ‘Santus Circus’ alongside images of proud clowns, daredevil acrobats, fire-eaters, jugglers, motorbike stunts and a man in top hat and tails, smiling with the secret of the good life and you were welcome to come and find out.
Walking up Detling Hill, getting steadily more annoyed at my plan to enjoy the walk up, I was pleased to see the glorious red-and-white Big Top at last, sitting at the Showground as though it had been there, solid, for a century, little flags fluttering above it in the hilltop breeze.
It was early on Saturday, hours before the first show, and all quiet save for a woman and her little boy who came out to meet me.
They were the latest two generations of the Santus Circus family: Ruby and her one-year-old son Cassian, representing the seventh and eighth generations of this remarkable family business.
Ruby leads me past caravans, equipment trucks and humming generators, eventually hoisting aside the heavy material of a performers’ entrance to reveal backstage.
I don’t know what you’d expect behind the scenes of a circus, but here it was: enormous glitter balls, make-up stands, rows of motorbikes, buckets and buckets (and buckets) of props and juggling equipment, and a Cage of Death kept conveniently in the corner.
Through one more curtain and we entered another world: the silent circus ring. It feels like entering a basilica, the ceiling soaring above hundreds of empty seats, everything silent and reverential, aside from the hotdog machine that has just been turned on.
Ruby Santus, foot-juggler, isn’t sure where to begin, so she just tells me everything.
Santus came to Britain from France in 1987, but the family’s involvement in entertainment stretches far beyond the Big Top. Ruby’s parents, uncle and aunt worked in live performance for decades, including writing for BBC variety shows, while Ruby and her brother Lucien were raised in the ring.
“I wouldn’t change it for anything. It’s who I am,” Ruby says. “We were in a different primary school every week, practising what we wanted to perform from a young age, with people from all over the world: China, Mongolia, Spain, Russia.
“Foot-juggling is in my family. My aunties, my grandmother and her sisters did it. I tried aerial, globe-walking, unicycle. Our parents let us try everything, but I really clicked with foot-juggling.”
There is a worry, though, about the survival of circuses as live entertainment dwindles.
“In other places, we can be risking our lives twice a day, not hearing a peep from the audience, who only later tell us how much they enjoyed it. In Kent, we always get the cheers and applause. That’s so validating.
“People don’t go to the theatre, or even the cinema, so much. There’ll be a time, I don’t know when, that live entertainment isn’t around anymore. But we always want to perform. It’s who we are. I remember times when we’ve been so poor we could hardly afford our next meal, but the show must go on.”
In 2020, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson disagreed. As Covid hit, the Santus family were stranded in a field outside Sittingbourne under lockdown. Ruby reached out to the local community, and the community showed up.
“It was frightening, having no option and thinking the circus wouldn’t survive. But then people came - people we knew, the local council, folk nearby. They knew we were in trouble and came with food parcels and generator fuel. We survived because of them. And so the show still goes on.”
That experience strengthened Santus’s determination to have its way of life recognised.
“We’d like to be recognised as a culture. People think of us as showpeople, but we have deep cultural heritage. During Covid there was no official support for us, no funding, no Arts Council grants because we weren’t theatre folk, and our cultural community needed protecting.”
Ruby’s brother Lucien, already in full clown make-up, tells me more beside the popcorn cart.
“The artform of circus is underappreciated. It’s an artform for us, but it’s an artform for the people as well. Once you’re in the Big Top, you’re immersed. You’re part of the show, feeling it with us, and we need that too as live performers.
“We travel every two weeks, pack up and bring all we own to perform. That’s our whole life we’re bringing. All our training, all our passion, everything we hope to happen down the line. I think people connect with us because…”
At that moment, Lucien is ‘connected with’ by a young woman who enters the tent determined to find her favourite clown and hugs him at high speed.
“Hi! Hi! Hi! How’re you?!” Lucien laughs, his painted smile now matched by the real one underneath.
Her father catches up and explains that his adult daughter is a very special young woman who he continues to care for, and the circus coming to town means the world to her.
“We love her as much as she loves us,” Lucien tells me afterwards. “She’s been coming every year since I was 10 and I’m about to turn 30. She always comes to say hello and we have a catch-up.
“It’s the same story everywhere we go. There’ll be people who really have a connection with us. We’ve been travelling between these communities for so long, there’s a real relationship.”
Before the show, I speak with Katrina, who joined Santus in March. She performs the aerial chandelier, works as the magician’s assistant and dancer, and gets stuck in with the hotdog stall as well.
“It’s been quite the adjustment,” she says. “Especially moving from auditioning for the West End.
“I studied musical theatre and got a scholarship to the Brighton Academy, but that world is so highly populated. Luckily, I knew people in the Santus family and thought ‘Why can’t I apply my trade there instead of resorting to a nine-to-five?’. It all used to feel out of reach, but the circus has changed that.”
Katrina cuts herself off. The seats are filled, spotlights on, and the show is about to begin.
I’m not going to tell you about the show because it doesn’t work in written form. It’s something you experience as part of it.
Certainly, it contained astonishing magic, death-defying motorbike stunts, extraordinary high-rope silk acts plunging 20 feet (also death-defying), remarkable balancing acts, contortionists bending further backwards than I can forwards (possibly also death-defying, there was a lot of defying of death), Lucien clowning with the audiences and getting a hell of a response, and foot-juggling, just to name a few.
See? Writing doesn’t cover it. You have to go and be a part of it.
When the show is over, the extended Santus family wave farewell from the ring before disappearing backstage. Within minutes, the scarlet-dressed beauties of the air are helping with hotdogs, while Lucien hugs and waves goodbye to those leaving the Big Top.
Some have seen me taking notes and photographs and tell me how much Santus is part of their lives.
“We’ve been coming to Santus for 20 years whenever they come to Maidstone,” one woman tells me. “We brought our kids and now we bring our grandkids!”
And there her grandkids are, all holding the look of a young someone who will remember today forever.
Before leaving, I speak to the man who has stood at the centre of the ring for decades: Ernest Santus, ringmaster. Sitting to one side, watching all generations excitedly depart, he tells me in his soft French accent:
“The circus, it’s hard work. Behind the scenes, setting up. I’ve done it all: trapeze, unicycle, juggling, exotic animals. China, Spain, Italy, all over Europe with the act. But after my dear father’s work in France, I brought Santus to the UK.
“When we were young, he taught us everything. It’s in the blood. I hope it’s the same for my children and grandchildren. Will the circus go on? Some have said it’s already finished, but we’re still here, doing it the old-fashioned way.
“We’re always ready for the next town.”
Stepping out of the Big Top and into the sunlight high on Detling Hill feels a little like waking up.
I think about the old phrase of ‘running away to join the circus’. I think about the generations of culture Ruby and Lucien maintain, full of determined love, living like their Uncle Ernest and their beloved father Roger showed them before he passed away in 2024. I think of Katrina, finding her way to the circus to live how she wants. The children who were watching - in awe.
Some might say the circus is a remnant of history.
I say Santus Circus represents the fact you can pursue your hopes, and that some out there today are living their very own dream-come-true inside the Big Top. It’s good to know that’s still there.
