Slaley show celebrates 150th anniversary
Aug 4 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal
IT is a striking fact that a Northumberland village show shares a link with London’s Big Ben. Both the Slaley show on Saturday and Big Ben are marking their 150th.
Villagers will be celebrating the remarkable achievement of staging 150 show events over a century and a half of enormous social and technological change.
Show chairman Albert Weir sums up the appeal of such a traditional event as a fixed point in a fast-changing world.
“It started soon after Queen Victoria came to the throne but it is a timeless event. If you ignored people’s modern dress, it could be any year,” he said.
The show features a staggering 400 classes. There are 600 entries alone for its industrial section, which features pursuits like cookery and handicrafts.
“We are a tiny village with a big show. Slaley people have always been proud of the event,” said Albert.
Many classes are redolent of a lost past.
There are the usual show mainstays – the sections for flowers, pot plants, floral art and vegetables, although modernity has made its presence felt amid old-time classes like three stalks of rhubarb with a prize for the best bell pepper or chilli plant.
Slaley’s agricultural heritage is reflected in the farmers’ classes such as bagged and clamped silage, hay, and heads of oats, barley and wheat.
The industrial section’s cookery classes include singing hinnies, a savoury supper dish, afternoon tea for one on a tray, something made from a wartime recipe, bottle of lemonade, and four hen’s eggs.
Handicraft classes cover items such as a tea cosy, peg bag, a piece of lace, proggy mat and hand-knitted socks. Among the countryside classes are hedgerow jam or jelly and sloe gin.
There are sections for photography and walking sticks, wood carving and turning, children’s classes like a collection of grasses in a jam jar and an edible necklace.
The poultry classes hark back to the show’s origins, and the programme is rounded off by the sheep section, dog classes and terrier racing, and horses and ponies.
But one category which would astound the show’s founders in the alpaca competition.
Slaley-born parish council clerk Pat Wilson has built up an extensive collection of village memorabilia and will be staging an exhibition on the show’s history. The show will also see the launch of the book Slaley Then and Now and some villagers will be dressing in Victorian costume.
“Successive generations have worked hard to maintain the tradition of an annual get-together of local people, competing in friendly rivalry. They come back year after year to compete,” said Albert.
“The annual exhibition of produce, livestock, and craftsmanship by the local community of Slaley and surrounding area has seen many changes in its history but it has continued to survive and prosper to become one of the best village shows in Northumberland.”
The total of 150 shows will be reached on Saturday after breaks for two world wars, foot and mouth epidemics and the odd torrential downpour cancellation.
“But true to the Dad’s Army spirit, each successive committee has not panicked, but simply soldiered on, knowing it has a long and rich tradition to maintain and enhance,” said Albert.
“Time may move on but Slaley show remains the same as ever, a traditional village show in the heart of the Northumbrian countryside.”
Page 3 - Collection tells a vivid story of the way it was >>
