Ferret racing and giant marrows: how UK country shows keep rural traditions alive

Several years ago I was asked to judge the homemade wines at a local agricultural show. I have written to tight deadlines at World Cups and delivered a speech in the Long Room at Lord’s; neither filled me with quite the same feelings of pressure and anxiety. I knew how seriously such competitions are taken, the strength of feelings they evoke. I had nightmares of being strangled with a siphoning tube. Fortunately my co-judge was more experienced and sanguine. She also held the old-fashioned opinion that swirling the wines around your mouth before spitting them in a bucket was uncouth, and so following her lead I drank a small glass of each. There were more than 20 entries, and after half an hour my fears had dematerialised into a fuzzy summer glow.

That was before the pandemic. These days anyone taking a similar approach to judging homemade wines would probably end up being hospitalised, thanks to the sheer range and number of entries. During lockdown people all over the country filled their days rediscovering old crafts, baking, brewing and winemaking among them. Entries for the industrial tent (originally for displaying the work of rural craftspeople, but showing everything from baking to children’s art, knitting, jam and photography) at agricultural shows have soared.

With its complex rules and brutal truth-telling, it is not a place for the fainthearted. At a show in North Yorkshire I once saw an entry for the bread competition damned with a handwritten notice reading: “This is not a loaf!!!” Each exclamation point a dagger to the heart. A friend who entered cheese scones with chives in them to a show in County Durham still shivers when she recalls the reaction.

Held up and down the country – in cities as well as remote rural locations – these county shows are a highlight of the Great British summer. Besides the agricultural heart, elements of the village fete bring an eccentric joyfulness – and they’re becoming ever more popular. Attendance at agricultural shows has risen to previously undreamed-of heights since anti-Covid measures were lifted.

This year, the Great Yorkshire Show saw the highest ticket sales in its 185-year history, the Royal Highland Show broke its attendance record, and the Northumberland County Show saw an increase of 25% on admissions on pre-lockdown numbers. A growing interest in the local environment and food production, coupled with the rising cost of living, has made people look for affordable amusement closer to home. Many shows are registered charities and staffed by volunteers.

The industrial tent remains at the heart of the action and is not to be missed. Here you will witness the dadaist juxtapositioning of everything from a fruit scones contest to a children’s animal-made-from-vegetables competition (cucumber crocodiles abound). As a friend of mine once remarked after a happy half-hour examining the “garden-on-a-plate” exhibits: “Why go to Papua New Guinea or the Amazon to see the exotic and the bizarre when it’s right here on your doorstep?”

Beyond that, there may also be stalls selling cakes, plants, novelty doormats, fishing-fly pictures and hand-painted salt dough sheep. There will be tents run by societies from the Country Land and Business Association to the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, and trade stands of companies specialising in dairy hygiene. Eventually you’ll find the livestock, the historical core of any show.

By the mid-18th century, a boom in the population of Britain generally blamed on the Industrial Revolution had left the nation wobbling on the edge of famine. British farming had to change as swiftly as manufacturing had done. The reformation was led by a new breed of go-ahead farmers, such as Thomas Coke, Lord Townsend and Robert Bakewell. Their network of county agricultural societies promoted new scientific methods of stock breeding and crop management. But not enough people took any notice.

Then someone, possibly Coke, hit on the idea of the agricultural show, where all the advances would be displayed and explained, the superiority of the new methods demonstrated and, to encourage good practices, prizes would be awarded to the best stock and produce. The shows were educational and progressive. They were also high-minded and serious. If people wanted fun, they could go to the circus.

Most larger shows have thousands of animals on display, in a bewildering number of guises. Perhaps surprisingly, Britain has more varieties of farm animal than any other country.

Among the sheep pens, farmers lean over the fences and study, scratch and chat. The air is full of their chatter, merging with the buzz of electric clippers from the sheering contests and the nervous, throaty warbling of the sheep (halfway between Edith Piaf and a baby monitor). At most big county shows prizes are fought over by up to 30 breeds of sheep – from handsome grey Herdwicks (whose existence owes much to the work Beatrix Potter did to conserve the breed) to chunky Ryelands, whose high-quality wool was once so valuable it was nicknamed Leominster Ore.

The goats will be housed nearby, in a marquee that smells oddly cheesy. There’ll be leaflets and notices about the huge benefits that goats bestow: the nutritive value of the milk, the rich flavour of the meat, the high quality of the wool. The pig pens are generally awash with excited children, pointing at a snoozing Tamworth sow, whose hair is stripy black and brown (brindle) and whose nose is so pointy it is often said (well, by people who care about pigs, anyway) that a Tamworth can “pick a pea from a pint pot”.

In the cattle sheds the mood is calmer and more serious. The breed societies have their own stalls. Sheep may occasionally fetch fortunes, goats may attract passionate enthusiasts and pigs spawn children’s TV franchises, but this is where the real money is, among the giant Simmentals and white-faced Herefords. The cattle sheds were the favourite haunt of Victorian show judges, whose descriptions of prize dairy specimens sometimes teetered on the Jilly Cooper side of country life – “grand bosoms” and “perfect loins”.

Somewhere far off they are calling out the entries for the Pony Club fancy dress parade. There’s a roar from the chainsaw carving demonstration. This year the Northumberland County Show had camel racing and “giant Aldabra tortoises” alongside the more traditional gundog scurry and the Young Farmers’ Club tug-of-war. Amid the bubble football and the axe-throwing demonstrations it’s hard to believe that until the 1950s most agricultural shows refused even to countenance show jumping because it was too frivolous. (Surveying the events of the Great Yorkshire Show, one critic harrumphed that it was now nothing but “a giant car boot fair with a few animals attached”.)

But that is to miss the point. Over the years agricultural shows have become popular traditions, and popular traditions are shaped by what people want, not what they need. And these days fun is high on the agenda – from folk bands to local cider stalls, ferret racing to wrestling, there’s no end of entertainment for all ages.

Yet despite the parachute display teams, quad bike stunt shows and appearances by celebrity farmers such as Kaleb Cooper, Adam Henson or the Yorkshire Shepherdess, agricultural shows still fulfil their role as promoters of modern farming. This year the Great Yorkshire Show boasted an Innovation Zone featuring hi-tech farming kit including an automatic Hoofcount footbath for cattle and a 100% methane-powered tractor. Lord Coke would surely have approved.