Royal Shows and Agricultural Progess, 1839-1989

The 1989 Royal Show, being held at Stoneleigh between July 3rd and 6th, is the 150th in a sequence which began when the newly formed English Agricultural Society held its first 'Country Meeting' at Oxford. The history of this important national event mirrors the changing fortunes of the agricultural industry since early Victorian times, and provides an insight into the nature of the innovations that have contributed to agricultural progress since the mid-nineteenth century.

The context of the formation of the English Agricultural Society (which became styled the Royal Agricultural Society of England when it was granted a Royal Charter in 1840) was an increased appreciation of the potential of science for raising agricultural productivity. There was also, with anti-Corn Law agitation, the need to respond to the threat of free trade coupled with a requirement for agricultural intensification to counter the dire Malthusian predictions of population outstripping food supply. Chandos Wren Hoskyns, a leading early Victorian agricultural commentator, wrote of a 1000-a-day increase in population which necessitated 'an indefinitely increasing supply of food to a constantly increased demand'. John Charles, third Earl Spencer, who formally proposed the formation of the English agricultural Society, spoke of English agriculture as being in its 'infancy' in 1837, despite the progress which had been achieved by earlier agrarian 'improvers'. Henry Handley, who wrote an influential 'open letter' to Spencer in support of the new institution early the following year, claimed that agriculture was too much dominated by the 'old school' who regarded innovation with suspicion, had no time' for 'book learning', confined their lives to their own immediate neighbourhoods, and had minds unwilling to seek or appreciate new information. Science – chemistry, botany, entomology, mechanics was to be the 'pilot' which would steer agriculturists into 'hitherto imperfectly explored regions'.

Thus the promoters of the English Agricultural Society were particularly concerned to encourage the spread of agricultural knowledge and to bring new techniques and improved farming methods to the attention of farmers who only had very limited sources of information at their disposal. Agricultural shows had become established on a county basis during the latter part of the eighteenth century, while the 'sheep- shearings' then held at Holkham and Woburn had attracted country-wide audiences, thereby demonstrating the ability of such events to act as a focus for the interchange of ideas. An annual meeting, held in different parts of England, was therefore considered to be an important means by which the Society could fulfil its broad educational mission.

Oxford was chosen as the place of the first meeting because of its central location. The assembly of large quantities of agricultural implements and stock at a single point posed considerable difficulties at this time; the famous Shorthorn rattle exhibited by Thomas Bates, for example, had to be conveyed by ship from Middlesborough to London and then by barge' up the Aylesbury branch of the Grand Junction Canal, the whole journey taking three weeks to accomplish.

In 1840 the Society visited Cambridge following an invitation from a deputation of Cambridgeshire farmers led by Jonas Webb, the leading breeder of Southdown sheep. The following year it was decided to go to a manufacturing district and Liverpool was chosen as the show venue. Thereafter, a sequence of rotation was established so that the show was held in the various regions of England at set intervals. According to John Chalmers Morton (editor of the Agricultural Gazette between 1844 and 1888 and doyen of Victorian agricultural writers) there was a threefold rationale regarding the choice of show locality. The RASE could take its members to districts where there was a superior general level of farming so that they might learn by example. Lincoln (1854) was a case in point where it was recognised that the agricultural implements on display were 'more criticised and less stared at' than in backward farming areas such as Shropshire (the Society visited Shrewsbury in 1845) or Devon (Exeter was the venue in 1850). Alternatively, the Society could visit central districts which were easy of access so that members could 'teach each other', or go to backward farming areas where the event could be instrumental in breaking-down prejudice or stimulating new activity. Morton attached particular importance to this latter objective and the way in which the early Royal Shows could bring, for example, implements to the notice of farmers in districts where they were unknown is indicated in a communication that he received from the West Cumberland Agricultural Society which maintained that:

thanks to the Royal Agricultural Society holding their meeting in Carlisle [1855] I believe that exhibition was instrumental in opening the eyes of many of our Cumberland mechanics. Previous to 1855 our county was wont to boast of her ploughmen, but when it came to the test at Carlisle we were all beaten upon our own soil; not that our ploughmen were deficient in skill, but they had not the implements to work with.

As the establishment of the railway network facilitated travel and the movement of implements and stock (all show sites had a railway connection after 1845) the country meetings blossomed into mass spectacles of farming progress. About 20,000 people were thought to have visited the first Oxford meeting (attendance records were not kept until 1853), but by the 1870s the meetings often attracted well over '100,000 people, especially when held in populous urban districts. The relative agricultural prosperity of the third quarter of the nineteenth century led to the shows taking on the character of agricultural carnivals or festival occasions. The streets of the host towns would typically be decorated and festooned with banners proclaiming 'Peace and Prosperity' and 'Success to Agriculture'. At Exeter in 1850, 1200 people sat down to the pavilion dinner, there was a balloon ascent, and a barbecue where the chief attraction was a huge joint of beef cooked by gas.

The serious business of the early Royal Shows centred around the exhibition of agricultural implements and farm stock, and competition for the Society's prizes. Machinery was the area where contemporaries thought that progress was particularly marked. The. '1841 Liverpool Show report noted that there had been a 'vast stride' in agricultural mechanics over the brief period since the first meeting and this was in part attributed to the show's function of bringing together agricultural engineers drawn from a variety of localities. The Liverpool report stressed that the manufacture of agricultural implements was passing from the province of the village blacksmith to men of greater skill and capital. The opportunity for viewing, testing and evaluating agricultural machinery provided by the annual meetings constituted a radical 'change of environment' for implement manufacturers and the shows provided a focus for what the late- Victorian commentator Dan Pigeon termed 'storm centres' around which 'successive hurricanes of interest' in different types of agricultural machinery 'gyrated'. During the 'l840s there was intense interest in drainage tiles and tile-making machines following Smith of Deanston's popularisation of underdrainage and the development of cheap cylindrical drainage pipes. The hope that much of the cold, wet, heavy clayland of lowland England could be improved by underdrainage was combined with a heightened appreciation of the requirements for good plant growth and there was a parallel enthusiasm for all types of grubbers, scarifiers, clod-crushers, and harrows which could help to secure a better tilth or seed-bed. Various seed-drills and dibbling machines also received attention as the broadcast method of seed-sowing gave way to drilling, which allowed more uniform seed spacing.

During the 1850s attention switched to improvement in the efficiency and durability of agricultural steam engines. The founders of the RASE had been much impressed by the rapid strides that had been made by manufacturing industry during the early nineteenth century and believed that the adoption of steam power by agriculturists would enable similar progress to be made in farming. These hopes were not fully realised during the nineteenth century, for agriculture did not have the same scope for the scale economies that had transformed manufacturing and so much was still unknown about the natural environment in which farming operated. Nevertheless, fixed and portable steam engines were developed to drive a variety of farm machinery and their exhibition became a leading feature of the mid- and late-Victorian Royal Shows.

The intense competition which the Society's prizes attracted highlighted some of the deficiencies of the show system. In the case of steam engines, for example, many were developed more with the objective of securing the Society's accolades on the show-ground than with ensuring long-term durability in farm use. As William Fisher Hobbs (a leading tenant farmer and implement steward) observed in 1855:

The conditions of competitions laid down by the Society for portable steam engines have unfortunately led to the production of engines only intended for winning the Society's prizes and known as racing engines requiring the nicest care...

At Chester in 1858, 112 engines were entered in the show and many were found to be highly dangerous. This led to a regulation whereby competitors had to have the boilers of their machines examined and a certificate of fitness for use issued before being allowed to get up steam, but accidents were not infrequently recorded.

The advances that were made in the application of steam power to agriculture encouraged the hope that steam cultivation would come to be a practical proposition, and in 1854 the Society announced a £200 award (later increased to £500) for the steam cultivator that 'shall in the most efficient manner turn the soil and be an economical substitute for the plough or the spade'. Steam ploughing trials were an important feature of the country meetings during the late 1850s and 1860s whereby the various types of steam ploughing tackle that had been devised came under public scrutiny. Under favourable circum- stances steam cultivation did prove to be a viable proposition and was employed on English farms well into the present century. There was, however, no general adoption of steam tillage as, to be employed successfully, steam ploughing equipment required regularly shaped fields of uniform topography and these conditions were not often found. The shift from arable to past- oral farming which took place during the last quarter of the nineteenth century also inhibited the further development of steam ploughing.

Reaping and mowing machines provided a further focus of interest at the mid-Victorian Royal Shows. The mechanical horse-drawn reaper, reputedly first invented by the Reverend Patrick Bell in Scotland in 1826, came into prominence at the Great Exhibition of I851 where American McCormick and Hussey designs were shown. Philip Pusey (the first editor of the RASE Journal) hailed them as the most important addition to farming machinery since the threshing machine had ousted the flail. The chief advantage that Pusey identified was the reduced need for casual harvest workers, 'strangers who cannot always be found', and at the trials that were conducted periodically at the Royal Shows significant improvement in the efficiency and reliability of the machines was observed, the result of year-by-year cumulative small advances.

Stock exhibitions received much attention at the Victorian Royal Shows, and the range of animals shown underwent significant extension. In the 1840s exhibition classes were provided for the Shorthorn, Hereford and Devon breeds of cattle with an additional category for 'any other breed or cross'. Sheep classes were divided into Leicesters, South-downs, other short-woolled sheep, and for long-wools not qualified to compete as Leicesters. Pig classes simply distinguished between 'large' and 'small' breeds. As the Royal Show moved around the country, attempts were made to bring out animals specific to particular localities. Thus at Shrewsbury in 1845 and at Newcastle the following year, there was an extra class for sheep ‘most adapted to mountain districts' while Sussex cattle were prominent at Lewes in 1852. Some of these local breeds made significant progress as a result of show publicity and Herd Books were established. Extension of variety was a particular feature of sheep; at Chester (1858) there were classes for Shropshires, Hampshires, West Country Downs, Oxfords, and Cheviots, many of which became permanent additions by the 1870s. Increasing numbers of pigs were seen at the early shows, and horses came into prominence in the 1860s and l870s with classes for Agricultural (shires), Clydcsdales and Suffolks.

Dairy classes of rattle made particular advances during the late 1860s, and at Wolverhampton in 1871 the Channel Island breeds were first divided into Guernseys and Jerseys. This was a reflection of the increased importance of the dairy sector as milk production for the urban consumer remained a profitable area of farm enterprise at a time of increasing agricultural depression. In 1905 classes were instituted for the Dairy Short- horn and six years later the now familiar 'black-and-white' British Friesian made its first show appearance following the formation of the British Holstein Cattle Society on the Gloucester showground in 1909.

A significant influence of the stock shows was to foster the trade in pedigree livestock for overseas export. 'Master Butterfly', the first-class Shorthorn at the 1856 Chelmsford show was sent to Australia and buyers from the United States and Canada purchased many of the prize-winning Shorthorns and Herefords of the 1870s. The herds which they helped to establish paradoxically later provided much of the meat imports that contributed to the impoverishment of the home producer.

The Royal stock exhibitions were attended with a number of problems associated with the condition in which the animals were shown. Too often show appearance bore little relation to that which had practical utility and stock were often hopelessly over-fed. In the 1850s, for example, pigs which 'could not stand' were disqualified, as were sheep which found 'some difficulty in respiration' and rams which 'like the Romans of old, preferred taking their meal." in a reclining position'. Other abuses included the filing of pigs' teeth to give a false impression of youth and the contrived shearing of sheep to accentuate symmetry and hide detects. Although adverse comment was often made about the character and purpose of the stock exhibition the show system proved extremely resistant to reform, so that in 1871 J.C. Morton, in answer to the question as to what was meant by 'show condition' was tempted to reply that it was 'a hopeless obesity, a constitution endangered, a system forced to an unnatural extent, a pampered condition of body anything but fitted to withstand the hardship to which cattle are constantly subjected'.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century the Royal Shows faced increasing problems. The 1879 Kilburn Show which had the largest-ever entry of live and deadstock assembled at a Royal Show since the Society's inception, on a site in excess of 100 acres, took place during one of the wettest summers on record. Because of this the showground presented a 'thoroughly wet and dreary appearance', the Society made a substantial financial loss on the event, and twenty-three years later Joseph Darby recalled that:

... everyone who visited Kilburn retains vivid recollections of its excessive downpours; of the planks laid down the leading avenues and without which they would have been perfectly impassable... one man slipped and falling between two of the planks was so tighly wedged that it was difficult to pull him out.

The organisation and finance of the shows had become far more complex compared with the modest beginnings at Oxford and Cambridge and it had become much less easy to find show sites of sufficient size provided with adequate service provision and, as agriculture fell in the general esteem of an increasingly urban society, it became difficult to attract the non-farming public and gate receipts fell. This was also a reflection of social change and new leisure patterns for, as the editor of the Mark Lane Express observed in 1901:

... the man of today expects a great deal more for a shilling than did his father and grandfather before him. He is so accustomed to cheap excursions, both to the seaside and country, that he is apt to laugh at the thought of paying a shilling for the privilege of walking about all day to inspect a lot of stock tied by their heads in sheds.

The response of the RASE's council was to propose the abandonment of the peripatetic show system in favour of an annual event on a permanent site. Taking into account the vast improvements that had taken place in transport during the Society's existence, the belief was that 'the endeavour of the Society in the future should be to bring the people to the show, and not the show to the people'. A permanent showground was established between Willesden and Ealing and Royal Shows were held at Park Royal (as the venue was known) from 1903 until 1905. The experiment was not successful as farmers proved unwilling to venture to a London agricultural show in the summer when there was so much work to occupy them on their holdings, while Londoners sustained their established reputation for agricultural in- difference. The termination of the peripatetic show series was unpopular among the RASE membership and was interpreted as an indication of the remoteness of an increasingly aristocratic governing council from the harsh realities of everyday farm life at the turn of the century. When attendance at the third Park Royal Show slumped to 23,978 it was clear that to persevere with the permanent showground would endanger the survival of the RASE. Thus the Society's council was reconstituted and the peripatetic sequence resumed in 1906 when Derby was visited under the honorary directorship of Sir Gilbert Greenall (later Lord Daresbury).

Since the mid-1870s much of English agriculture had suffered from low prices brought about by increased overseas competition 'is new areas were brought into cultivation and long-distance ocean transport of food became cheaper. Apart from a brief revival associated with the Great War, agricultural depression – which reached its nadir in the early 1930s – was widespread and much land in England fell into a neglected, tumbledown condition. While the early twentieth-century Royal Shows were not, under the prevailing conditions, associated with the optimistic pioneering spirit which characterised the early- and mid-Victorian events, there were still a number of ways in which they continued to provide a focus for agricultural progress.

The development of the tractor provides a good example. The need rapidly to convert permanent pasture back to arable use to boost home food production during the latter part of the First World War led to considerable interest in the potential of the tractor; the first competitive trial of internal combustion engines for agricultural use had been held at the Cambridge Show of 1894. The RASE participated in a number of tractor trials and the latest machines could be inspected at the annual shows and evaluated in conjunction with reports that were published in the Society's Journal. The production of the Ford- son Model 'N' tractor in 1929 set new standards of performance and reliability but, prior to 1939, the tractor did not, on the whole, provide an effective substitute for the horse for the majority of English farmers.

The potential of electricity for farm use also received attention during the inter-war years. One of its chief pioneers in England was R. Borlase Matthews who was elected to the RASE council in 1928. In a lecture given to the Gloucester Chamber of Agriculture in 1924 entitled 'Making hay without the sunshine and other applications of electricity to agriculture', he identified 200 distinct agricultural uses. An electro-farming conference was held at the RASE Chester meeting in 1925, and repeated at Reading (1926) and Newport (1927), and the subject was investigated by the RASE research committee. Take-up of electricity on farms was, however, very slow; this was in part due to the unwillingness – or, indeed, the inability – of landlords to pay for the connection and wiring of farmhouses and outbuildings so that by 1939 only '10 per cent of agricultural holdings had an electricity supply. As late as 1954 only about half of the farms in the United Kingdom had electricity installed and of them only a minority used it for agricultural purposes.

Royal Shows were suspended during the Second World War and because of the shortage of materials and labour were not resumed until 1947 when Lincoln was visited. The immediate post-war shows were immensely successful despite the problems of congestion caused by high attendances.

After the Second World War there was a general determination that there should be no return to the inter-war neglect of agriculture. Increased research, the establishment of the National Agricultural Advisory Service, and price support for a range of products encouraged very rapid technical progress in agriculture and the format of the Royal Show did not keep pace with the rate of agricultural change then taking place. Although there were many educational and instructional displays, the Royal Show retained the social character of a 'summer pageant' that it had acquired under the honorary directorship of Sir Roland Burke, Lord Daresbury's successor in 1930 who continued in the position for twenty years.

During the 1950s the question of a permanent site for the Royal Show again began to be debated but opinion on this was still strongly influenced by the Park Royal failure half a century earlier. Towards the end of the decade the financial liabilities associated with moving the show around the country became so pressing that a change in the arrangements was clearly imperative. Eventually, a lease was taken on ground belonging to Lord Leigh at Stoneleigh near Kenilworth in Warwickshire and the Royal Show has been held there since 1963. At the same time as the development of a permanent showground was being debated within the Society a 'Fact-finding Committee' investigated the full range of the RASE'S activities and concluded that a permanent site should develop into the 'agricultural centre of England’. The Committee’s recommendations led to the establishment of the National Agricultural Centre which was opened in 1967 and which now supports a number of permanent demonstration units which contribute to an extensive year-round programme of agricultural events, conferences and symposia. The various organizations and associations which have been attracted to Stoneleigh includes the Rare Breeds Survival Trust which has done so much to preserve breeds of farm animals, many of which would have been familiar to Victorian farmers, from extinction.

Royal Shows at Stoneleigh have developed into international agricultural expositions, usually attended by well over 200,000 visitors. They provide an outstanding opportunity for the farmer to view the best of English livestock and what is new in various areas of technology. Although the efficient production of food remains a prime objective, recent shows have reflected the changing preoccupations of agriculture during the 1980s. Our perceptions of ‘agricultural progress' have changed so that the time has passed when there could be much general agreement with the view of John Chalmers Morton that 'Agricultural progress, if of any interest or value whatever, simply means more food produced per acre'. Thus conservation exhibits, opportunities for farm diversification and alternative enterprises have considerable prominence at the sesquicentennial show, which perpetuates the RASE’s historic role as a communicator and catalyst of agricultural chance.

Further Reading:

Nicholas Goddard, Harvests of Change (Quilter Press, 1989); C.S. Orwin and E.H. Whetham, History of British Agriculture 1846-1914 (Longman, 1964, 1971); Edith H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales VIII 1914-1939 (Cambridge University Press, 1978); B.A. Goldenness, British Agriculture Since 1945 (Manchester University Press, 1985); E.J. Russell, A History of Agricultural Science in Great Britain 1520-1954 (Allen and Unwin, 1966).