A HISTORY OF A VILLAGE SHOW
Summer, and it's time for village committees up and down the country to host their annual flower and vegetable village show. There will be cups of tea and homemade cakes, a raffle, tombolas and competitions for the waggiest dog tail or the prettiest pup. There'll be vases of sweetpeas, tall gladioli and colourful dahlias. Jars of jams, chutneys and marmalade. Victoria sponges and gingerbread men. Hanging baskets filled with a profusion of trailing plants, giant onions, speckled hen's eggs, garden peas, ripe tomatoes and the funniest wonky veg. And every class taken extremely seriously by the participating contestants.
These village flower and vegetable shows are 'rooted' (excuse the pun!) in competitions that were organised by English florists' societies, and gained popularity in the 19th centuries, particularly during the Victorian era, with the first recorded shows appearing in the 1830s, although the original shows can be traced back to the 1700s.
Shows, usually patronised by the gentry, aimed to encourage horticulture and neatness in gardens and households, and often included competitions for the best-stocked and neatest gardens, neatest cottages and exhibits of vegetables, fruit, and flowers, along with amusements like donkey races, tug-o-war and sack races. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) played a significant role in the development of these flower shows, with the first Royal visit to an RHS show in 1890. The greatest of all 'village' shows being, of course, The Chelsea Flower Show, now a prestigious annual event, which has its origins in the RHS Great Spring Show held in Kensington in May 1862.
Royal Horticultural Society rules are rigidly applied to the cut-flowers, fruit and vegetable classes, while WI (Women's Institute) rules are applied to the cookery, preserves, drinks and crafts.
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Recorded histories of these shows can also be useful for tracing ancestries, as the history of families can be seen through flower show records, or to gain an insight into the everyday lives of people from the past. If ancestors were judges, for instance, they were obviously knowledgable in what they were judging, and were a respected within the community.
Such records can also show the living conditions of the past. Anyone able to enter a produce show with flowers or vegetables indicated a garden or small plot of land where produce could be grown and had the leisure time in which to tend a garden. To enter a cake, they had the spare income and time to make one. Show results in archived local newspapers, or even names engraved on a trophy, can link to the past.
In those early years, cash prizes were a welcome addition to pitiful rural incomes, and a red rosette proved to manual labourers that they could compete successfully with their neighbours and even their ‘betters’, the professional gardeners from the 'Big House'. One episode of the popular Downton Abbey portrayed this when the Dowager Duchess (Maggie Smith) always won a particular category - whether her entry was the best or not. Usually, however, flower shows encourage a respectable competitiveness, where only occasionally fierce rivalry turns into outright cheating or even deliberate sabotage!
These shows are an event for the entire family. Back in the 1970s, going by old schedules, flower and vegetable classes were for the men, cookery and crafts for the ladies. Now, entries are more diverse with a cookery class especially for men and fun classes for children.
The sight of neatly laid out entries and the riot of colour when entering the hall after judging has taken place is one of the annual pleasures. Sparkling, polished jamjars - labels removed or hidden - gladioli spikes ramrod straight, a burst of delight from hydrangeas, blue or pink. Neat pansy-faces staring up from their blue or black velvet-covered egg-box plinth. Six peas, four eggs, fat leeks with knitting needle straight-combed roots. Onions as huge as footballs. Carrots, nurtured in upright drainpipes... miniature gardens or plasticine monsters for the kiddies. For the grown-ups, imaginative exhibits on a theme of Coronation Day, A Film or Book Title... An arrangement in a teapot, a thimble, an eggcup. A single stem rose in a glass vase. Photographs of bees or garden gates, bridges or chimneys.
For one-hundred years our village - the Parish of Chittlehamholt, Satterleigh and Warkleigh - has held its Village Flower and Vegetable Show. We all say the same, that we are entering 'some small thing' in order to 'support the show'. All the same, we all hope for at least the gain of a third prize card! Although the winning of a First Place card or a rosette... or a trophy would be even better!
From Philip Larkin's poem: Show Saturday
"The long high tent of growing and making, wired-off wood tables
past which crowds shuffle, eyeing the scrubbed spaced extrusions of earth:
blanch leeks like church candles, six pods of broad beans (one split open),
dark shining-leafed cabbages – rows of single supreme versions, followed
(on laced Paper mats) by dairy and kitchen; four brown eggs, four white eggs,
four plain scones, four dropped scones, pure excellences that enclose a recession of skills.
And, after them, lambing sticks, rugs,
needlework, knitted caps, baskets, all worthy, all well done..."
The last line of the poem, Show Saturday reads: ‘Let it always be there.’