Garden judging

A prize for the best cropped and best kept garden was awarded as part of the early shows. In 1924 the entrance fee was 6d per double and 4d per single garden and the prize was 5/- for each single and double garden.   Mr Boyd (Haigh Hall head gardener at the time) was asked to …

National Coal Strike 1912

An interesting bit of context that came from my investigation of industrial relations in the nineteenth century is that in 1912, when the NSHS committee was meeting to organise the annual show (I started with the 1912 minutes and newspaper report, right at the beginning of this blog) there was the first national coal strike.  …

Strikes and Riots

I wondered what the relations had been like between Lord Crawford and the New Springs miners at the time NSHS began.  In his book, The Making of Wigan (Wharncliffe Books, 2005) Mike Fletcher describes a pretty turbulent picture during the second half of the nineteenth century.  In 1853 there was a miners` strike in Wigan …