In March 1947, Falmouth Spring Flower Show was the only one held to be in Cornwall, all the others having been cancelled because of extreme weather.
It was reported that exhibits surpassed all expectations, that Queen Marie of Yugoslavia opened the show and Princess Chula Chakrabongse of Siam presided over the second day.
These are but a few of the intriguing facts discovered when compiling a brief history of Falmouth Spring Flower Show for a free exhibition that runs until the first day of this year’s show on March 29.
This year, after a damaging winter, it is hoped that Falmouth, voted Britain’s fourth most popular town in which to live, will welcome visitors to a show that a past mayor described as “the shop window of Falmouth and of Cornwall”.
Indeed, from the 1950s to the late 1960s the prize exhibits were carefully packed and sent by train to be reassembled in department stores in Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Manchester to promote the town as an all-year holiday resort. High street shoppers could enjoy spring blooms weeks before their local ones appeared and be tempted to “winter at Falmouth – it’s warmer”.
The first show was planned in 1909 by a committee, supported by the local Chamber of Commerce, to be a great horticultural and social event. The chosen venue was Gyllyngdune Gardens, opened to the public in 1907, with its cast iron bandstand, covered promenade, and an events marquee extension. It was to be so successful that for years prior to the second world war it was the most popular spring flower show in the country, with special excursion trains from Paddington bringing visitors from all over the UK. For the first show, in April 1910, local MP Sydney Goldman suggested inviting Queen Victoria’s middle daughter Princess Christian to open the show, believing that a member of the Royal Family “would speed the floral venture on what is hoped will be a long and successful career”. The first day ended in a masquerade ball in a tent with a large sprung floor in Gyllyngdune gardens.
The following year, Princess Alexander, a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria, opened the show and officially named the newly-built Princess Pavilion where the show is held today. There were grand evening concerts, with vocalists accompanied by the string band of the Royal Garrison Artillery, Plymouth Division. Patrons tickets cost 5 shillings, at least a week’s wages to the working man, and admitted the purchaser unlimited access to the show and concerts.
Royal and celebrity guests were regular visitors to the early shows, which were held in April and included Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, flying ace Amy Johnson and Dame Margaret Lloyd George. The shows were suspended during the two world wars but in the spring of 1945 a committee chaired by A Val Baker organised a show for April 4 and 5 in aid of the Mayor’s Tribute Fund for returning service personnel. A profit of £92 was given to the fund. Val Baker’s continued support for over 20 years helped secure the future of the show. His niece, Betsy Forsythe, became the first female chairman of the show in 1968 and later its first woman president.
Betsy’s photo album of the shows, together with newspaper cuttings, her collection of past show schedules, and other memorabilia, were recently given to a member of the current committee. This collection, together with some photographs from the Poly Local History and Research Group and local family albums are the core of the exhibition.
The show schedules reveal many of changes that have taken place since that first show. In 1947, Queen Marie of Yugoslavia opened the show. That year event’s executive committee were Falmouth corporation gardeners Charles Rowe and Jack Semple. Their horticultural expertise, enthusiasm and gentlemanly rivalry were a perennial ingredient of the hugely popular post-war shows. Their spectacular staging of flowering shrubs and plants from their respective corporation gardens and glass houses, alongside displays from commercial growers such as Harcourt Williams, historic gardens such as Glendurgan and Bosloe, and Falmouth’s sea front hotels, did the town proud.
The show’s commercial section was hotly contested too. Wooden crates of broccoli, cabbage and lettuce were packed for market and jostled with bunches of carrots, radish and endive. Market boxes of flowers from Cornish growers had to travel the required number of miles by rail to the show. Nine boxed narcissi varieties are listed in the 1950 schedule, as well as violets, anemones, polyanthus, and flowering pot plants. Silver challenge cups were awarded to both Mr and Mrs Russell Mumby that year for their commercially grown flowers.
Soon there was not enough room to display all the produce and flowers at the Princess Pavilion and the whole show was moved to the Drill Halls in Bar Road from 1959 to 1967. The following year the commercial section was closed due to a decline in Cornwall’s market gardening and the show returned to the Princess Pavilion.
The schedules also chronicle the changing social background of the organisers. The cover of a rare 1930 schedule lists scores of vice-presidents, many from Cornwall’s landed gentry, owners of commercial nurseries, and expert horticulturists who had inherited Cornwall’s famous historical gardens. These supporters largely disappear from the considerably smaller post-war committees, replaced by corporation gardeners, businessmen, hoteliers and amateur gardeners.
The advertisements in the schedules for local shops also document the changes in Falmouth, from family-owned businesses to high street multiples. And since 1982 the show has been independently run and has to fund the hire of the Princess Pavilion and all the show’s costs. No longer are celebrity guests lavishly entertained at top hotels; judges and committee members share biscuits and pots of tea.
The exhibition organisers have still to discover how the exiled Queen Marie of Yugoslavia came to open the 1947 show and where daffodil growers Mr and Mrs Russell Mumby came from in Cornwall. But they do now know that the English-born Princess Chula Chakrabongse of Siam once lived near Falmouth with her husband, a grandson of the monarch made famous in the film The King And I at Tallimar House, Perranarworthal, later bought by author William Golding.
They have also tracked down Penny Keeping, a curly-haired little girl from the 1950 show chosen to present a bouquet to the mayor’s wife. Penny will be special guest at this year’s show.
Then and Now, a free history exhibition of Falmouth Spring Flower Show, continues at The Municipal Buildings, The Moor, Falmouth until March 29. It is open 9am to 5pm daily except Sundays, alongside a display of gardening books in the library. Falmouth Spring Flower Show is at Princess Pavilion on March 29 and 30 10.30am to 5.30pm. Admission is £3. Children under 16 free.
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