July 2023, on Flower Show memories
TALES FROM THE HILLS
(Ashmansworth and Crux Easton)
It is Flower Show time again. A decade ago, one of our older villagers was asked for his memories of past shows. He wrote:
“There are a dozen villagers, and ex-villagers, who’ll know more than I do:
“There’s Penny Lake. She remembers the Show re-starting after the last war in 1947. She and her late husband, Patrick, splendid bloke, were Secretaries in the 1960s. Her father gave the Saunders Cup.
“The Coopers took their turn in hosting the Show over many decades.
“Kiffer Finzi was here from 1939. His mother, Joy, was a vice president of the Show. His father, Gerald, was a famous apple-grower at Church Farm. Kiffer must have tales to tell.
“Then there are the Burches, Derek Edwards, the Fishers, the Nicholsons, the Peases, Carol O’Shaugnessy and the Fanes. I can still picture Pam Fane going up in the basket of a balloon, or as anchor-woman in the Tug-of-War at Faccombe. If she couldn’t get us coffee for our elevenses in some windswept barn before the Show, she’d have sherry and glasses on the table as we wrote out the prize cards.
“Of the venues for the Show, I remember the sweet smell of silage, and of farm machinery, in the Liddiards’ huge shed at Upper Manor Farm, now demolished, or down at Wilf, Geoff and Mary Cooper’s at Lower Manor, the scent of hay.
“And I can still see Mrs Butler-Henderson, our host at Faccombe Manor, in her later years, sitting by the ornamental pond with drowned hedgehogs floating in it, while the Show went on round her.
“In the years since I started showing, we’ve had a Baby Show, Tractor Driving, Clay Pigeons, Tug-of-War, Juvenile Sports with Prizes, Judo Display, Brass Band, Silver Band, Punch and Judy, Model Aircraft Display (and dropping sweets for the children), Vintage Vehicles, Bicycle Polo, Dressage Display, Rides on a Horse-drawn Waggon, Rides in a Horse-drawn Carriage, and Ascents in a Balloon, to name a few. Not all in the same year of course.
“I wasn’t there on the occasion, in 1933, when Geoffrey De Havilland and his son landed at the Show and took people up for flights round the village. That would be something to remember.”
That was written ten years ago. We’ve lost a few since then, most recently Derek Edwards. We’ll miss him and those vegetables of his.
Agricola, July 2023