King George V’s Success At Agricultural Show, Guildford, 1922

Published on: 24 May, 2013
Updated on: 24 May, 2013

By David Rose

This coming bank holiday Monday sees the Surrey County Show at Stoke Park, Guildford. It has been held there since 1954, but other agricultural shows visited Guildford earlier in the 20th century.

The caption beneath the picture says it all: from the national Times newspaper, May 25, 1922.

The Royal Counties Agricultural Show was held at Shalford Park in 1904, and at Stoke Hill (now Bellfields estate) in 1912. It came to Guildford again in 1922, and the national press reported that King George V was very successful with entries from his Windsor and Sandringham estates.

The national Times newspaper reported: “From Windsor His Majesty exhibited the champion Shorthorn heifer, a third prize yearling bull, a first prize Devon heifer, and a second prize yearling Hereford heifer. The Sandringham successes comprised a first and two seconds for Red Polls and four seconds and a third for Southdown sheep.”

Views of the show ground at Guildford in 1922. This and the following pictures are from a supplement issued by the local Surrey Times newspaper at the time. Thanks to Fred Smith of Guildford who has some wonderful scrapbooks of local events that his late father compiled. One of them includes pages from this supplement which Fred has kindly allowed me to copy.

It also reported that there was a good attendance for the show than ran over several days at the end of May that year, although the number “fell considerably short of the Bournemouth number last year”.

The weather was very hot, and the same report noted: “The excessive heat caused much discomfort to the animals, and several pigs died either on transit or after arrival.”

George V did not visit the show personally, but royalty was represented by the Duke of Connaught [third son of Queen Victoria]. He arrived at Guildford railway station and was met there by Lord Northbrook and the Mayor of Guildford, and at the show he was received by Sir Edward Stern, the show’s president.

There had recently been an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Britain, and in an address to agriculturalists present, Sir Arthur Griffiths-Boscawen [a Conservative party politician], said the “serious outbreak came at a time when farming was at its worst a few months ago”. The Times stated that he was “dubious as to whether they would be able to stamp it out”, but the Government had “backed him splendidly by preparing to find a large sum of money for safeguarding the livestock of the country”.

From my current research I have been unable to discover whether the 1922 show was held at Shalford Park or at Stoke Hill. It is unlikely that it was held at Stoke Park, however.

Any extra information would be welcomed.

There is a short and silent British Pathe news reel of the 1922 show at Guildford that you can view on its website. Click here. Be warned: you have to view an advertisement for Peugeot cars before the clip begins. Do you recognise the location? Looks like Shalford Park to me.

For details of this year’s Surrey County Show, click here for its website.

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