The Royal Show

This film celebrates the spectacle of everything brought together on one site for the four days of the Royal Show held at Cambridge in 1951 - the livestock competitions and parades of sheep, pigs and cattle, working dogs and horses, and the displays of agricultural machinery, crafts and expertise. In the year inspired by the Festival of Britain, the Queen visits on the first day of the show and presents prize cups and long service medals to farmworkers (70 years on one farm!).

The Royal Show was an annual agricultural show organised by the Royal Agricultural Society of England every year from 1839 to 2009. It was a triumph of planning and logistics, particularly being held on a different site each year until 1963 when it settled at Stoneleigh Park (previously known as the National Agricultural Centre) near Stoneleigh in Warwickshire. At Cambridge in July 1951, the Show was located on a site at Trumpington, welcomed by the Mayor and Mayoress of Cambridge, and the Royal visitors were The Queen, the Princess Royal and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. The BBC broadcast programmes about the 1951 show for general viewers and also technical programmes specifically for farmers.