Nina Hoole explains what the prizes awarded at agricultural shows can reveal about our ancestors
The humble agricultural labourer is often absent from historical records. However, the prizes awarded at agricultural shows can tell you that your forebear excelled at ploughing or could grow impressive vegetables, and reveal even more valuable personal information.
Breconshire Agricultural Society in South Wales was the first county agricultural society, set up in 1755. Such institutions were originally the preserve of the aristocracy and gentry, promoting innovation in agriculture and sharing best practice. Then, from the late 1700s, provincial societies took off. Agricultural shows were a later development to help further societies’ aims, with cattle shows, ploughing matches and dinners. Local landowners could win recognition for prime livestock, and sponsor prizes to encourage wholesome attitudes among the ‘deserving poor’.
Such prizes, or premiums, could also be funded from a society’s membership subscriptions or donations by individuals. They were usually a monetary sum, which could be equivalent to a week’s pay. At a show in Melksham, Wiltshire, in 1864, recipients also received framed testimonials and in some cases silver spoons, whereas at other shows new coats and gowns were also presented. Agricultural premiums could be for developing a new farming implement or the growing and harvesting of a new crop, while social premiums focused on rewarding labourers’ skill, conduct or self-sufficiency.
The prize categories for social premiums could be wide-ranging or very specific: in the West Midlands, Warwickshire Agricultural Society’s 1872 show offered a premium “to those who shall have resided in the County and maintained themselves and family consisting of not less than five legitimate Children, each of which shall have lived to the age of five years, the greater number of years from the day of marriage without parochial relief except in illness”. Alford Agricultural Society in Lincolnshire had categories for the “Female Servant of good character, under 40 years of age, never having been a Housekeeper, who shall have been the longest and most regular Depositor in a Savings Bank” and the “Waggoner who shall have lived the greatest number of years in that capacity in the fewest servitudes, without having been intoxicated whilst out with his Master’s team and providing a satisfactory character from each Master or M
