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== The Royal Agricultural Show in Hoole, June 1893<ref>''<small>Cheshire County Records Office; Lancashire County Libraries’ Digital Archive of 19th century newspapers; The National Archives, Kew; and [[The Hoole Millennium Book]]</small>''</ref><ref>''<small>Article researched and written by Monty Mercer, May 2017, Hoole History & Heritage Society</small>''</ref> ==
[[File:5LRG1 Showground in Hoole 'The Illustrated London News'.jpg|center|thumb|545x545px|''<small>The Showground in Hoole, an engraving from “The
The Royal Agricultural Show was held in Hoole from 17 – 23 June 1893, the biggest event that has ever taken place in Hoole. It was the Olympics of its time, a national competition and an international exhibition. Regional English cities competed annually for the privilege of hosting the Show. It was similar to a county show, but on a completely different scale
The first stage of Chester’s involvement was to put in a bid to The Royal Agricultural Society of England two years before the planned event. This was followed by a period of lobbying, leading up to the decision on the successful town or city. Following the decision, a period of one year was given over to the preparations before the week-long event. It was expected that there would be a “legacy” from it, rather like our modern Olympics.
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By 1891, when it was known that the Show was to take place in the North West of England, Chester was still smarting at its previous failure: three Shows had taken place in Lancashire in the previous 30 years.
== The Bid ==
The bid from Chester was submitted by the Chester Improvement Committee and the Chester Farmers’ Club at the 1891 Doncaster Show – two years ahead of the planned 1893 Show, as was customary. The only realistic rival was Manchester, disparagingly referred to by the Chester contingent as
▲The bid from Chester was submitted by the Chester Improvement Committee and the Chester Farmers’ Club at the 1891 Doncaster Show – two years ahead of the planned 1893 Show, as was customary. The only realistic rival was Manchester, disparagingly referred to by the Chester contingent as “Cottonopolis”.
Three possible sites were included in the bid: Upton, Hoole and Hough Green. Chester Town Council preferred Hough Green, as it would lead to more trade from visitors walking from the General Station through the city centre to the show site.
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The committee was formidable: the Chairman was Charles Brown, Mayor of Chester; Hugh Lupus, First Duke of Westminster, local landowner; the secretary was George Dickson (of Dickson’s Nurseries); J.R. Thomas was the treasurer; together with the Hon. Cecil T. Parker (the Duke’s agent); and Robert Yerburgh M.P.
== Lobbying ==
During the autumn of 1891, leading up to the decision in early 1892 in London, a period of lobbying took place. Local councils were approached to provide “Warrants”, letters of support for Chester’s bid, to be sent to the Society’s headquarters in Hanover Square. Many councils were keen to support Chester, but, notably, Macclesfield was non-committal, as it was so close to Manchester, and Holywell was positively hostile, since its Council believed that Chester took too many of Holywell’s shoppers away from their town centre already!
== The Decision ==
On
▲On 29th January 1892, a delegation of The Royal Agricultural Society visited Chester, to inspect the submitted sites. These were now down to two, the Upton site having mysteriously disappeared from the list. Following the inspection, the delegation was entertained to lunch at the Grosvenor Hotel by Robert Yerburgh. It then proceeded to visit Eaton Hall to look at the Duke of Westminster’s world-famous stud. What was left of the day was devoted to inspecting the rival Manchester’s sites.
Five days later, on Wednesday
The “Manchester Men” gave of their best, then the RASE Council proceeded to the vote. The Council numbered 41, two of whom were the Duke of Westminster and Cecil T. Parker! There seemed to be no concern for potential conflict of interest.
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The Council further accepted the Society’s surveyor’s, Mr. Bennison’s, recommendation that, of the two sites on offer in Chester, the Hoole site should be selected. The reason for the choice was that the soil of Hoole was sandier and contained more gravel; it was, therefore, less likely to be churned into mud by the thousands of animals and people using the site, than the more heavy soil of the Hough Green site. This decision actually turned out to be somewhat ironic during the Show Week.
Following the decision at 2pm, Cecil T. Parker was sent from the society’s committee room to give the news to the Chester delegation. He is reported in “The Cheshire Observer” to have said to them:
Some members of the Chester delegation had had to catch the train back to Chester earlier in the day, before the decision was announced. To their surprise, on arriving at Chester Station that evening, they were met by celebrating crowds, who had heard the news hours before: a message had been sent from London to the newly installed main telegraph office in Chester. The city was full of excitement and pride at the prospect of hosting the Show, and preparations began almost immediately.
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By July 1892, following the Show’s week in Warwick, the permanent features of the Show’s buildings were transported to Hoole, the clock tower and Bodega amongst them, and were placed in a one-acre timber store on a site where the present Beech Grove is now.
From August 1892 to May 1893, the Local Committee, with a local workforce of 150 men, prepared the site. With the Victorian delight in detailed figures,
During the spring, the Royal Agricultural Society, also using a local work force, began its work of erecting the permanent structures, which included:
It was then announced that the Prince of Wales would be visiting Chester and the Show, so a separate subscription fund was set up to decorate the city.
== The Showground ==
The Hon. Claud Hamilton Vivian, of Hoole House, had rented out the hundred acres of the show ground to the Local Committee. The ground was bounded in the north-west by the Hoole Road, in the south-east by Hoole Lane, the north-easterly limit was just about where Pine Grove is now, and in the south-west it stretched to where Lime Grove is today. It is the only former showground in England not to have been fully built over, parts of it being the site of Hoole Allotments, and the Coronation Playing Fields.
The undeveloped part of the site is now registered with Archaeological Services as of archaeological interest. Crockery, silver spoons, the original manhole covers to the drains, and the possible brick footings of the Royal Pavilion, have been discovered.
[[File:5LRG2 Royal Pavilion Dining Room.jpg|left|thumb|''<small>The dining room in the Royal Pavilion, partially set for lunch, James H Spencer</small>'']]
Whilst research was being carried out at the National Archives in Kew, important photographs, undisturbed for 120 years, were discovered, of the interior of the Royal Pavilion, taken on the Tuesday of the Show by a hitherto little-known Chester photographer, James Hampson Spencer. His photographs consisted of double images, taken at slightly different angles, as in some of the early experiments in stereoscopic photography. They reveal a sumptuous drawing room and dining room, specially prepared for the Prince of Wales to entertain his honoured guests on the official Meetings Day of the Show.
[[File:5LRG3 Plan of Showground.jpg|center|thumb|409x409px|''<small>The Plan of the Showground taken from “The Farmers’ Herald”, printed on the ground</small>'']]▼
[[File:5LRG4 Showground Footprint.jpg|left|thumb|''<small>The Showground’s footprint on a plan of modern Hoole</small>'']]
▲The Plan of the Showground taken from “The Farmers’ Herald”, printed on the ground
The exhibits included the following stands and stalls: Implements 50, Cheeses 44, Machinery in Motion 12, Poultry 11, Horses 12, Cattle 18, Sheep 8, and Pigs 4.
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In addition, the Show had its own fire station, post office, telephone exchange, and publishing house, where “The Farmers’ Herald” was printed.
Outside the ground, there had been major changes, to cater for the expected throngs of visitors. A footbridge had been constructed by the Joint Railway Companies, from one of the General Station’s main platforms to an exit on the Hoole Road (its bricked-up entrance can be seen on the south side of Hoole Road today). This bridge was in continuous use until 1967. Hoole Road had been widened from Newton Lane to where the United Reformed Church is today (note the extra-wide footpath on the north side of Hoole Road). A partial one-way traffic system was introduced, up the Hoole Road, for the duration of the Show, which hackney carriages had to follow. Lightfoot Street was paved for the first time as a consequence and was described in the newspapers as
== The Week of the Show ==
Now that everything was in place, an observer described Hoole and the showground as
▲Now that everything was in place, an observer described Hoole and the showground as “a white tented city when viewed from the walls of Chester” and “Hoole has grown with mushroom rapidity into a busy industrial centre”. “Vast public improvements at Hoole and visits of so many surging thousands of visitors from all over the country, a stimulus to agricultural life locally”.
True to the abiding love of figures, the reports of the lead-up to the Show itemised the numbers of entries: livestock 2061, implements 5527, horses 509, cattle 759, sheep 631, pigs 162, poultry 836, produce 975 (including 475 Cheshire cheeses). Most, if not all, of the animals would have been driven up Hoole Road from Chester General Station. Earlier plans to build special railway sidings alongside Lightfoot Street had proved to be unnecessary.
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The animals would have been taken into the showground, via the show service road entrance, to stock pens at the rear of the ground, to acclimatise and to settle. (This road is in Alexandra Park, which leads to its maintenance yard along the easterly edge of the Dene Hotel).
A copybook exists, written by Vincent Williams<ref>''<small>Mrs. Churton, for access to her father’s, Vincent Williams’, copybook of 1893</small>''</ref>, an eight-year-old boy at the time, who lived in Egerton Terrace, Hoole Road, and who watched the passage of the animals to the showground:
'''Saturday
Partly as a consequence of drought, there was an agricultural depression in England, but this was also caused by more long-term trends. There had been an increasingly successful set of imports of cheap cereals from the mid-west of the United States, with a parallel lack of investment by British farmers in home-grown crops.
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The country was also in political turmoil, as the last stages of Mr. Gladstone’s (eventually unsuccessful) Home Rule Bill for Ireland made its passage through Parliament.
However, a far more optimistic impression of ‘the state of the nation’ was created at the Royal Agricultural Showground in June 1893:
What may seem an odd way of beginning the show to the modern observer, after so much preparation, was, in husbandry terms, very sensible. The first day was always “Implements Day”. Visitors were allowed to view the vast array of machinery and tools, but the animals were out of bounds. It was thought that this was to prevent the recently arrived animals from suffering more stress.
Entry cost two shillings and sixpence (12.5p), £12 50 in today’s values. There were 299 visitors all day. Amongst the engines viewed were some of the earliest internal-combustion engines (
'''Sunday
Following the service, invited guests of the Duke’s toured the showground.
'''Monday
That evening, Edward, Prince of Wales, arrived in Chester on the 6.10pm train from Euston. Unfortunately, the train stopped short and the Prince had to walk along the platform before he reached the red carpet. He was then driven through the decorated centre of Chester to the Town Hall, where he received, and replied to, the Loyal Address. To a loud pealing of bells, and watched by hundreds of people, he was then driven to Eaton Hall for a house-party that evening.
'''Tuesday
During the afternoon, the Prince and his party sat in the Royal Box of the main horse-ring. There was a parade of the horse prize winners for his benefit. At 4.30pm he left for Eaton Hall.
The show was over for the day, but the planned spectacles were not. The day was the summer solstice and there were two events planned for the evening, centred upon the River Dee, a fireworks display and an
At 9pm,
The two steamers were compared - unfavourably in the case of the Mayor’s:
The following day the Prince of Wales wrote to Charles Brown, the Mayor, saying that the spectacle had been the best setting he had ever seen.
'''Wednesday
Remarkable on the day was the prize-winning prowess of Thomas Houlbrooke, Calverley Farm, Tarporley. He had four 1st prizes, twelve 2nd prizes, and was champion for Cheshire cheese. His unprecedented prize was £100, with a £10 prize for the dairymaid.
'''Thursday
'''Friday
The total attendance for the week had been 115,908. This makes a stark comparison with Hoole’s population at the time of 3000. The show had been a social, financial and professional success, and it could be believed that the event was all over.
However: on '''Saturday
In the aftermath of the show, the Royal Agricultural Society noted in its proceedings, detailing the
The permanent features of the show were moved to Cambridge, the 1894 venue. The timber was sold off. Chester Town Council bought the bandstand for £24, and for a time had it installed in Grosvenor Park, till the bands’ sheet music was continually blown away by winds coming up the River Dee.
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The Show did come to Chester again, in 1925. This time the potential for mud was no bar, and the Hough Green site was chosen – and special railway sidings were built, at Saltney Station.
[[File:5LRG5 Farmers Herald front Page.jpg|center|thumb|511x511px|''<small>The entrance to the Showground on Hoole Road, from the front page of “The Farmers’ Herald”, printed daily at the Show
== References ==
▲The entrance to the Showground on Hoole Road, from the front page of “The Farmers’ Herald”, printed daily at the Show.
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