Guest post by local historian Philip Grant
Both countries set out in their pavilions extensive displays of the mineral wealth, timber and agricultural products that they produced, and were available for export, both to the British market and around the world. One of the recent developments, which made possible their exports of meat and dairy products, was ships with refrigerated holds. The display in Canada’s pavilion for 1924 included a novel way of demonstrating this, with a life-size sculpture in butter of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) in a refrigerated display case.
Philip Grant,
December 2017.
Sometimes
topical events remind me of stories I have come across in my local history
research, and the cricket news from “down under” is what has prompted this
article.
The Ashes
have been at the centre of one of the great international sporting rivalries
since the 1880’s. When the British Empire Exhibition (“BEE”) was held at
Wembley in 1924, Australia was involved in another rivalry, with Canada, over
which was the top self-governing Dominion in the Empire. Both had seven acre
sites for their pavilions, on the south side of the artificial lake which ran
across the centre of the BEE site. These were side by side, with Australia to
the right of the main route from Wembley Park station to the new Empire
Stadium, and Canada to the left.
Both countries set out in their pavilions extensive displays of the mineral wealth, timber and agricultural products that they produced, and were available for export, both to the British market and around the world. One of the recent developments, which made possible their exports of meat and dairy products, was ships with refrigerated holds. The display in Canada’s pavilion for 1924 included a novel way of demonstrating this, with a life-size sculpture in butter of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) in a refrigerated display case.
This
exhibit attracted a great deal of attention from visitors to the BEE, and they
could even buy a postcard of it. The Prince himself, who was President of the
BEE’s organising committee, was impressed by the statue, although he thought
that the sculptor had made his legs too fat!
When the
BEE re-opened for a second year in 1925, Australia decided that it needed to go
one better, with a large scale refrigerated butter sculpture in its own
pavilion. Being Australian, they did not follow Canada’s royalist example, but
went for a sporting theme instead. The winter of 1924/25 had seen an Ashes tour
of Australia by the Marylebone Cricket Club (the official name of the England
touring side at that time), which Australia had won by four test matches to
one. What better way for the Aussies to celebrate than by presenting visitors
to the 1925 BEE with a butter tableau showing the famous England opening
batsman, Jack Hobbs, being stumped during one of their victories in Sydney.
Canada had
also made a more impressive butter sculpture as part of its refrigerated
display for the BEE in 1925. This time it showed the Prince of Wales in his
honorary role as Chief Morning Star of the Stony Indian tribe, during one of
his visits to their country. You can decide for yourself which of the butter
sculptures, Australia or Canada, was the best!
Coming
back to the current Ashes series, with Australia again victorious, many England
cricket fans will wonder how different the results might have been if Ben
Stokes had not been excluded from the side. Even that aspect has a BEE angle to
it, as one of the main purposes of the New Zealand pavilion in 1924, as well as
to display its produce, was to encourage good working people from Britain to
come to their country and help to build its successful economy further. The NZ
province which was at the forefront of this effort was Canterbury, whose team
Stokes has been playing for, rather than England.
(All of
the images used are from the Wembley History Society Collection at Brent
Archives)
Philip Grant,
December 2017.
